


Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

by LetaDarnell



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-10 10:03:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetaDarnell/pseuds/LetaDarnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone was finally looking to the stars for the potential an alliance could bring and the good everyone could do when brought together.  The Stargate Program was the hub of peaceful negotiation. In the literal blink of an eye, there is war from all sides.  The city of Atlantis is attacked from the outside and inside.  The cost of peace was high.  The cost to return to it will be higher.</p><p> </p><p>And Todd isn't making things any easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I edited this and reposted it.
> 
> I still don't have an ending; suggestions are appreciated.

No one had come down to the brig since Atlantis had landed on earth. Three weeks had gone by, slowly and monotonously. The only way of telling time was by the changing shifts of the guards. The lights never darkened; the temperature never changed. The brig was its own, pathetic, and forgotten little world of nothing. It was just a bland cage with nothing in it save for a single bland occupant—though patient and abiding—was by now also considered nothing.

  
Todd wondered if, whatever convoluted bureaucracy the humans constantly struggled with, had no plan for him and, just as he was, were waiting for one to present itself. Humans did often lack the ability to think of things too far ahead--especially when he was involved.

  
He did his best not to let on that he was looking for a plan to present itself; John had made it quite clear what he’d do if he even thought Todd was looking for one, let alone thinking one up. He’d heard the threat from someone else long ago and it had worked… until he began to speak to John. It was because of John that Todd was no longer behind bars and it was because of John that Todd was behind bars now. This time, the threat was not going to work. This time, Todd would do whatever it took to defy his captivity and taste true freedom, no matter how it ended for either of them. He wouldn’t do it for himself this time; he’d do it because he owed the man.

  
He had done nothing but survive, live from day to day, for so many years he had failed to see the point of keeping track of them until John had done everything short of beating him to get the message across that dying free was better than rotting away in someone else’s basement. He went to such lengths to show him hope, only to know that once Todd had tasted it, he could forever dangle it just out of reach while laughing. John had apparently grown bored with that game—or just decided he no longer liked Todd’s less-than-concerned attitude—and just abandoned him altogether with the statement that if Todd showed hope for such freedom again, he’d take Todd’s life away first.

  
Freedom was no longer Todd’s goal. It was not out of pettiness or cowardly resignation, or even spite, but out of a sense of duty and debt. He’d given John’s life back years ago; this time he would repay in tutelage. Before, John showed him what he believed humanity truly was. Todd wanted an opportunity to do the same.  
By now, Todd wondered if he should still keep track of how long he was imprisoned. The genii, at least, had some use for him. It was merely a formality--no matter how skilled Todd had become at escaping in recent years—to leave the force field on while closing and locking the brig doors.

* * *

John arrived, shooing the soldiers away.

  
His usual peeved attitude toward the wraith was accompanied by a sense of melancholy that he was either trying to hide or fight. He wasn’t dressed for duty, merely a tee-shirt and jeans, and his hair was in even more disarray than usual.

  
Todd stood to greet him, but that was it. They were at a standstill, locked in what is known as mamihlapinatapai—two people wanting the same thing, but each unwilling to take initiative. To Todd, this was John’s city, and John had made it clear that he was not welcome. To John, this he was ruining Todd’s ‘next time’; he was a jackass.

  
John shoved his hands in his pockets.

  
Todd blinked.

 

  
John sighed.  
Todd tilted his head in confusion. He didn’t move any closer, but he was now truly curious as to what John was trying to force himself to say.

  
“Stargate Command’s decided to move you to Area 51,” John said, looking at his shoes. There, he’d said it. He wondered why he felt worse now. He didn’t know why he felt bad at all in the first place. For a wraith who was polite enough to stay out of his head, Todd had a knack for messing with it in other ways.

  
Todd’s expression of curiosity hardened into something unidentifiable. “I see,” he said.

  
“So you’ve heard of it?” John asked. As far as he could tell, Todd’s knowledge of things was random at best and based around what he could steal at worst.  
“It is where you put things you want to forget and the world to never know of,” Todd said. “Will you at least tell me: When you spoke of how little worth there was in a life spent in a cage for eternity, were those words meant to be hollow, or merely for yourself?”

  
“What do you expect me to do?” John complained, taking his hands out of his pockets and waving his arms.

  
This wasn’t how he wanted things to go. Todd was supposed to be upset, or at least ignorant of the whole thing. He was supposed to be the good guy, offer manly comfort, and then send Todd on his way. Why did Todd keep ruining his ability to help by telling him to piss off or asking questions that made him look bad?  
“I do not expect you to do anything,” Todd said. “My fate is no concern of yours.”

  
“Look, this isn’t my fault!” John said.

  
“No, it is not,” Todd said. “It is mine for believing in your deception for years.”

  
John wanted to explain, but, he didn’t. He wanted Todd to understand, but he also thought Todd wouldn’t believe him. He wanted to know things were better this way and that Todd should hold out hope, but he didn’t believe that. He didn’t like what Todd was saying, but he didn’t know why he should care. He felt his ambiguity would disappear if he told himself Todd was just upset and trying to get out of it. “So… this is ‘goodbye.’”

  
“Enjoy your freedom, Sheppard.”

…………..

John woke up to someone trying to contact him over his radio. Yawning , he reached over and grabbed it off the nightstand.

  
“Huh?” he asked, holding it to his ear.

  
“Please see me in my office,” Woolsey said over the device.

  
“Do you know what time it is?” John asked, grabbing his clock. If he was going to argue, he wanted to be right. It said 4:59 am. There had better be a good reason for this.

  
“Early enough I’m not in a mood to repeat orders,” Woolsey replied. “SGC’s sending a helicopter to pick you up. I’ll explain during the trip.”

  
“Is this as serious as it sounds?” John asked.

  
“Several marines are dead and Todd’s missing.”

……………..

The helicopter ride was unpleasant enough to be considered aggravating, but hardly uncomfortable enough to detract from how suspicious circumstances had been in the last few hours. Too many details piled up and happened too precisely and too much was unknown as a result.

  
No one from Atlantis noticed, but the trip was worse for the pilot. He thought landing through the cloak would be the end of his problems, but he had barely been briefed on Atlantis. He had no idea what had happened or what a wraith was, but the more they contemplated and explained the situation, the worse he felt, even in the air.

  
Woolsey explained the situation to John, Teyla, and Ronon as they passed thermoses of coffee between back and forth. “Stargate Command wanted to avoid places that were heavily populated and to avoid heavy traffic in case something happened.”

  
“Didn’t work, did it?” John retorted.

  
“The trip was supposed to change drivers twice with no other stopovers. They never made it to the rendezvous point with the second driver.” Woolsey continued over the noise of the helicopter. “No one from the car managed to radio a distress call. A news helicopter alerted the Onizuka Air Force Base when they saw the car on its side between two pile-ups on highway 106. The county’s not happy the Air Force took over the investigation, but they said they’d let us take over if we get the highway clear in a few hours and leave immediately. This state’s not big on military intervention and we’re already trying to tell the media they’re panicking over nothing.”

  
“At least he’ll be easy to spot” John said, sipping from the thermos. “And it’s not like he can drive even if he figures out how to steal a car.”

  
“He also has no incentive to make this pleasant or easy for us,” Woolsey said. “He could cause a lot of trouble or, given that he knows nothing of earth, could get into some.”

  
Despite Woolsey’s intentions, his remarks caused Teyla to snort coffee back into the thermos she had taken from John. “We have to worry about someone taking advantage of a wraith?” she asked, laughing.

  
“He couldn’t have blocked the radio by himself,” Ronon said. To him, it was all just a matter of finding out who to shoot.

  
“Who’d want to help Todd escape?” Teyla asked.

  
“Someone who knew Todd was in the truck, probably,” John said pointedly.

  
“What would be the point?” Woolsey asked, feeling he was missing half the conversation.

  
“Blackmail, ransom, expose the Stargate Programs for dumb reasons… been there, done that,” John said, shrugging. For early in the AM, things weren’t as confusing at he thought they’d be. Disastrous, yes, but he could easily understand it now that he’d had some coffee. At this rate, they’d find Todd just before lunch…their lunch.

  
“How do we figure out which of those they intend to do?” Woolsey asked, hoping someone else would be serious about this.

  
“How do we know Todd’s cooperating?” Ronan asked. It’d be easier to solve both problems by just shooting Todd. If the wraith was wandering around, he was likely to give Stargate Command reason to let him shoot Todd. Problem solved. Things were easier when everyone was either a bad guy or good guy. Grey areas got your ship set to crash into a planet and lots of people whining about blame.

  
“How do we know Todd’s alive?” Teyla asked. She didn’t express much care about Todd’s life. Ally or not, he was still a wraith. Her job was to see if she could sense him. If he was dead, she was a dead weight and likely considered a burden by the armed forces. If there were better ways to help, she wanted to volunteer for those and, not stand around being useless.

  
John winced at the comment, though he didn’t know why. He’d seen nasty wounds; lost limbs; even deaths one would have to clean up with a mop; whatever his uneasiness was, it wasn’t from remembering those incidents. Now things were getting confusing.

  
He wondered who had the coffee.

  
“It’s been over an hour since the crash and there’s a lot he can get into. If he we don’t hear about having to scrape an alien off something when we get on the ground, he’s fine.”

  
“I think we should be a bit more worried about cleaning up after him,” Woolsey said. A wraith was loose, someone one was intelligent enough to wreck an armored car, and the best people to solve the problem thought this was little more than a nuisance.

  
“Usually when something like this happens, we just have to wait until whoever started the whole mess comes crying for us to clean it up,” John said. “Given Todd, they might just hand him back without a fight if he’s cranky enough.”

  
Woolsey sighed. As long as these three proved as competent as they were confident, it didn’t matter. If they were going to change their minds, it wouldn’t happen up here.

……………..

The helicopter landed as close as possible to the scene of the accident.

  
The armored car was on its side, spaciously sandwiched between two piles of cars. The street was littered with bullet shells, blood, and bodies. The day was still dark, moths gathered innocently around the lamps that only lit of small areas with bright, coarse, light. With the cars lying like cold corpses and the striking chiaroscuro of the scene, and the large amount of bodies that were present, the scene should have been dramatically eerie in its resolute quiet.

  
Instead, it just gave off a feeling of dullness. Inanimate objects lay where they were, their innate indifference obvious and unimpressive. The stillness of the air was neither stifling, nor hinting at some great vastness of the cosmos. Despite the scrutiny everyone gave it, the scene seemingly wished to be passed over, its greatest impression on those who were here being that of denying its own importance and trying to hint at what they were looking for was somewhere else.

  
There was only one doctor and her three assistants attending to the scene. Neither noticed the newcomers due to the darkness; to them, the helicopter was just full of more superiors bent on yelling at each other and had nothing to do with them. The doctor made no movement towards them, even after an assistant pointed them out to her; she finished the job at hand before even turning towards them.

  
“You’re the people from Atlantis, I take it?” she asked politely. “The wraith experts?”

  
“Yep,” Ronon answered. He always preferred to be as concise as possible.

  
“I’m Dr. Goldstein, forensics examiner for SGC,” she said, gesturing for them to follow her as she turned away. “We have to clear out the scene when you’re done, so take your time. Maybe you’ll find something we can use.” The doctor did nothing to hide the fact that she was eager, almost professionally giddy to learn what they could glean from what she told them.

  
Almost as if it had been practised, Dr. Goldsten took a flashlight from a waiting assistant, who immediately set about to another task, and climbed into the overturned armoured car. “Don’t disturb anything, please.”

  
The inside was already starting to smell mildly of tainted meat and flies were gathering. Everywhere her flashlight shone was something gruesome and disturbing, almost as if the ennui outside had cleverly hidden this from view just to laugh at their surprise and repulsion.

  
Woolsey stood back to give the others room; he was just here to babysit and explain—at worse give legalese in case something happened. Besides, they had to carefully step around two bodies to get to the car. He was not about to risk messing up a crime scene or getting in the way just to be useless.

  
“We’ve more or less pieced together what happened to the wraith for the first few minutes,” Dr Goldstein said. “What was its name again?”

  
“Todd,” John said. It was looking less and less like they could blame Todd for anything. Too bad; it was so much easier when they could.

  
There were two more bodies in the truck. The soldiers outside had been killed far more cleanly than these. The soldier in the rear of the truck had been shot in the back the head. The one in the front had been shot in the chest and his hand had been shot through. As gruesome as a death by a wraith was, at least you never needed a hose afterward.

  
“Most of what we’ve found about him is from splatter,” Dr. Goldstein said, waving the flashlight to show the blood on more than just the floor. John doubted forensic scientists made many friends. “Snipers—we believe two or three—took out the driver and tires, which is why the car tipped over. They kept shooting until it was on its side.” She pointed a small hole in the ‘floor’. “I sent samples of the blood to the labs to confirm all this, but the placement correlates with where Todd was sitting and the height would indicate the bullet hit somewhere in the upper back, probably the shoulder. There’s no exit wound splatter. It’s also the only wound we can’t match up to any of the other bodies.”

  
She moved her flashlight to shine on the damaged hand of the soldier in the front. There seemed to be less of the hand in the intense light. Bone gleamed like pieces of expensive porcelain that had carelessly been dropped and gristle glistened like strings made of fake diamonds. Bits of dark metal and wires had tried to hide away in pieces of flesh, as if trying not to disturb the morbid beauty of the incandescent light shining down on the sickening masterpiece.

  
“His radio was shot first when the doors opened; the blood splatter, though, would indicate Todd was crouching behind him.” The light from her flashlight shot from the destroyed hand to vague dots of dried blood on the floor and walls.

  
“Odd,” Teyla remarked. “It was following orders.”

  
“It doesn’t usually follow orders?” Dr. Goldstein asked.

  
“Not when it doesn’t have to,” Teyla said, scoffing at several memories.

  
“He still had his cuffs on, didn’t he?” Ronon asked, as a rebuttal.

  
“We haven’t found any evidence those were taken off, no,” Dr. Goldstein said, not entirely following the conversation.

  
“But he did leave,” Teyla stated angrily, her emotions directed at wraith instead of the alien she was arguing with.

  
“Why’d he wait?” John asked. Great, more mysteries involving Todd. Just what he needed before the sun came up.

  
“Threats, most likely,” Dr. Goldstein said, interrupting the group. “There’s splatter on the back wall and on the clothes of the corpse in the back and a droplet pattern on the floor. These match up with its shoulder wound and being struck on the side and jaw with something heavy if it were standing.” She moved the flashlight again, this time to shine on the back of the closest soldier. No one could see anything of interest, not even an interesting new pattern of blood. “There’s a vague set of footprints here from someone we can’t account for.”

  
The uneasy feeling John had had when talking to Todd was back again and he didn’t know why. Thankfully, Ronon spoke up before him.

  
“Seems straightforward,” Ronon said, crossing his arms. He wanted to get to the action. Especially the action that involved shooting something. It was a simple way of thinking, but when one has spent almost a decade where killing is a priority, things tend to simplify themselves.

  
“Well, you know it better than I do,” Dr. Goldstien said, ignoring the accusation of possibly wasting their time. “The thing did leave some interesting footprints of its own, though.” She shone the flashlight on the pool of blood from the far soldier. It was only a messy, partial print with small droplets from a splash littered around it. “He stepped back when he was hit. The footprints lead to the edge of the car, then to the street,” she said, her flashlight highlighting the prints and resting to shine on the last one.

  
“Most of the blood was on the heel, but this one indicates pressure was put on the ball of the foot after he stepped down. This is where the prints end, too.”  
“You have no idea why, I take it,” John said, covering up the fact that he didn’t either. The only good news was that he wasn’t going to have to help cover up picking alien bits off something.

  
“He took off his shoe,” Teyla noted.

  
“Huh?” John asked. “He was still cuffed, though.”

  
“He used his other foot,” Teyla said. “He—“ She looked down at her army-issued boots. No possible demonstration there. She looked at the doctor. High heels. Still wouldn’t work. “Mr. Woolsey!” she called out. She preferred to call others by their first names, but that was his strange, overly professional preference and she never argued about it.

  
“Did you find anything?” he asked, approaching them and doing his best to keep his poise while maneuvering around the bodies.

  
“Can you take your shoe off without using your hands?” Teyla asked. Loafers. Perfect.

  
“I don’t understand,” he said.

  
“Can you show them how?” she said, nodding vaguely at the group. “You don’t have to take it off completely.”

  
“If you insist,” Woolsey said, doubting he wanted to know why this nonsense was necessary. He shifted one foot so that his heel was off the ground and with the other foot, pushed on the back of the shoe with his toes. Once the back of the shoe was loose he slipped his foot out of the shoe halfway, showing that such a task was easy for even him.

  
“Thank you,” Teyla said before turning back to the group.

  
“So, if that’s what happened…why?” John asked.

  
“Thoroughness,” Ronon answered immediately. “No tracks.” Ever. No matter what. “They didn’t want to take chances with anyone knowing which way they took him.”

  
“How is it that no one heard all this?” Teyla asked.

  
“I don’t understand,” Dr. Goldstein said.

  
“Gunshots aren’t uncommon on earth,” Woolsey told her, making sure his sure was firmly back on his foot. “Not around here.” He didn’t go into the fact that cars made similar noises.

  
“Why not?” Teylaasked, confused. “That means they’re shooting at someone, which is serious.”

  
“Or they’re trying to,” Ronon corrected.

  
“That’s not always the case on this planet,” Woolsey said calmly. One of these days someone was going to have to explain many, many, many seemingly unimportant or contradictory details of Earth to the two aliens they’d recruited from the Pegasus Galaxy. That someone was inevitably going to be him for the most part, and he’d known it for years. He still didn’t want to. “In this country, it’s legal for nearly any citizen to own a gun.”

  
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Teyla asked.

  
“Welcome to Earth,” John said.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New character, same problem.

Dr Goldstain was no slacker, and more and more reports and findings were submitted to both Atlantis and Stargate Command. The more she found, though, the harder the nut became to crack, soon seeming impenetrable without a miracle.

  
Most of the cars had been stolen, though there was no pattern to the place or time the thefts had happened. The only fingerprints that had been discovered were those of the soldiers and Todd and no more footprints could be found. Four soldiers had been taken down as well as six attackers: ten bodies altogether. All four had clean records and all of the six were eventually traced as ex-NID members, a clue that at first lifted everyone’s spirits until the other proverbial shoe had dropped. There was nothing to do with such a revelation. There was no one to question, nothing to indicate a place or person to investigate, not even a hint that even The Trust was involved. After that, more dead-ends began to crop up. There were train tracks barely fifty yards from the scene. Todd’s shoe had been found, having been run over twice.

  
All this was the least of Major Landry’s problems. Homeworld Security thought too much time was being wasted hunting Todd down; the IOA had fractured over what to do beyond blame him; and they only thing Atlantis could deliver, with all their advanced technology, self-appointed genius, and someone who claimed to have been the closest thing Todd had to a friend, was to argue that it was still a good idea that they had taken the subspace transmitter from him.  
It had been two days and they had yet to find anything that hinted at ‘people-eating monster’. How did someone six feet tall, in prison coveralls, and green suddenly make Where’s Waldo something easy to finish?

  
He wasn’t surprised when his cellphone rang. All phones had been ringing constantly these days. What did surprise him was that the caller was not demanding another reason there was still a wraith somewhere it shouldn’t be. “I would like to speak to Dr. Daniel Jackson. Is this him?”

  
“Who is this?” he asked. He wanted to ask why they thought bothering him now of all times was a good idea.

  
“My name is Jesse Lee Duquesne.” they said.

  
Dumb question, Landry realised. Thankfully, they followed up with some actually useful information.

  
“I am at the Willows Inn on Market Street in San Francisco,” the mystery caller continued. “Can you arrange for me to speak to Dr. Jackson?”

  
He could practically feel the person on the on the other end roll their eyes at him. He reciprocated.

  
“How did you get this number?”

  
“You are missing an alien that is dangerous, confused, and easy to anger. Are you close to finding it?”

  
“How do you know about that?” Landry asked. He wasn’t supposed to be asking the questions and he wasn’t supposed to need to.  
“I am about to hang up,” the caller said, their calm becoming eerie now. “I can promise you I will have nothing to do with whether or not, word of this gets out. I can also promise you information on the whereabouts of the alien, but only if I have an opportunity to speak to Dr. Jackson.”

  
“This is a matter of national security; I—“

  
Suddenly the voice over the phone changed. It was deeper, louder, with a slight echo. It was clear the same body was speaking, but perhaps not the same ‘person’. Whether this was a Goa’uld or Tok’ra didn’t matter. Things had just gotten worse and he’d just been given a new laundry list of important questions he couldn’t answer. “I will give you nothing if I do not speak to Daniel Jackson. You risk exacerbating this situation greatly if you detain me. I am willing to show my goodwill by allowing you to sequester me here until you see fit. The front desk knows to direct you to my room and to give you my number. Good luck.” With that, Jesse hung up.

  
Landry was not impressed in the slightest. But then, he had nothing else to rely on. California was not a small state. It was not an appreciative state. Worst of all, it was not a convenient state.

  
Almost a hundred-thousand homeless, add to that the amount of runaways, substance-abusers, tourists, and just plain shady people no one would ever notice missing… Landry had to conjure up a better miracle than the one that had just landed in his lap or start figuring out how to guard a hotel room without causing a scene.

  
He sighed and stared at the phone, dreading admitting to even himself that calling Jesse back was his only option. He didn’t know how he was going to arrange this, as now he had two aliens he needed help from but couldn’t trust. There were so few things he knew about Jesse: Was this a trap? What information did Jesse have? What risk was there? What gender was this person?

* * *

Three days ago, an alien had gone missing, with no clues as to where it had been taken. Two days ago, another alien had called to offer help in finding the first. Yesterday, the air force had the good luck to discover and cover up a strange forensic find from an unrelated murder.

  
In the city of Stockton, just south of where Todd had disappeared, a man was found murdered. He’d been killed on the street, in a dark and filthy alley at night. Technically this was in no way unusual for the city or even state. The police had assumed it would be just another cold case until the forensics lab had found tiny bones and bits of flesh wrapped around the top of the man’s spinal cord.

  
More aliens.

  
It was time to get some answers, starting with ‘How long does it take to get to San Francisco?’

* * *

Jesse was almost unnaturally calm about the arrangement. Snipers had been situated in the buildings across the street to keep an eye on him…her…whichever. Jesse wasn’t allowed to move from the room until the army gave permission, even after the discussion with Daniel.

  
Somehow, Landry didn’t expect Jesse to stay there, despite how happy Jesse was to comply. Then again, neither things going their way nor silence from their enemy were ever good signs, making their combination an almost nauseating experience.

* * *

Daniel had no idea what he was doing. What was he going to say? ‘Hi, so where’s the wraith?’ He didn’t even know what a wraith was for the most part. Landry wanted a face-to-face interview with this Jesse person based mostly on suspicion—a tiny part wanted Daniel to find out which pronoun to use in regards to them—this didn’t help Daniel figure out what to say or what to keep an eye out for in regards to this ‘mystery saviour’.

  
The hotel wasn’t the usual cheap-yet-trying-hard-to-be-friendly mess he had become accustomed to in his travels prior to joining SG-1. The atmosphere here had taken measures to be tranquil and calming to the point of being soporific. There was a heavy sense of sleep-inducing fancy dullness to a strange and seamless mix of rustic and modestly modern styles throughout the hotel.

 

  
The door opened just after he knocked on it.  
“Dr. Jackson?” the person at the said cheerfully. Daniel hadn’t spoken to Jesse on the phone, but Landry told him he had no clue what gender to expect. Now, actually seeing Jesse up close, gave no evidence either way still. Jesse was an inch shorter than Daniel himself, with prominent physical characteristics that inferred Korean descent. Jesse’s hair was short, in a professional-looking version of an outgrown buzzcut, again alluding nothing toward whether both genes were X or if one was Y as both he himself and many other men had worn the same cut, but so had Sam. The very last, and most obvious hint that Jesse preferred to lie somewhere in the spectrum of ‘how should I know? in terms of gender appearance were the neatly pressed business clothes: a simple suit, complete with tie and polished shoes that revealed only that Jesse did not intend for a causal chat in regards to the inevitable ultimatum.

  
“Uh, yeah, so… why exactly am I here Miss…t—uh…?”

  
“In South Korea, I am Jesse Lee; here I am Mr. Jesse Duquesne.”

  
Jesse gestured for Daniel to follow and enter the hotel room, and then closed the door after him.

  
“So… ‘Welcome to San Francisco’?” Daniel asked. It would explain a lot. On the calm days, when the government sat still and meddled in no one’s affair and no holidays were in sight, the city of San Francisco adorned every street pole with rainbow flags; dialog, graffiti, advertisements, and even hired fundraisers screamed about something related to the LGBTQ community; every sidewalk had someone considered ‘out of the norm’ in some way casually tucked into every corner. Jesse’s refusal to stand on a side of the gender-defining fence and stay there was mild in comparison to regular citizens of the city.

  
“Exactly; but for now think of me as male if it makes anything easier for you,” Jesse said, pulling out a chair from the desk near the window. He sat down and gestured for Daniel to do so on the bed.

  
“So… why me?” Daniel asked, taking the offer to sit down.

  
“I was the one who suggested that SGC find a way to sequester me here before our meeting,” Jesse said, leaning back and lounging in his chair without losing either professional or confident poise. “You have at least two snipers who can easily take me out where I’m sitting and I’m not about to move any time soon. As much as this…’snake’ as your friend often calls it, has helped me in financial success and a bit of cunning, I will be speaking and have agreed to any proposed decisions on my own free will. Is there anyone else in your program who’d believe me about this better than you?”

  
The real question that Jesse was asking was ‘Who would be smart enough to realise I am giving you an advantage over me on purpose and not take it as an immediate threat?’ He had also addressed how much Daniel both despised and distrusted Goa’uld, and had almost blatantly said that whenever Daniel felt like it, could end the lives of both the symbiote and host. Yet, due to his posture and almost smarmy tone, doing all this intentionally was part of a larger scheme to get what he wanted.

  
“Not really,” Daniel said. If he was going to play a game of secrets with a Goa’uld—or something similar—he’d had to have some of his own to keep. “Why all this?”  
“As in ‘what do I want?’ or as in ‘I’m no going to get it no matter what?’” Jesse asked. “Because if this is the latter, our discussion is over.”

  
Daniel leant back, sighed, and rolled his eyes. Why…just why, couldn’t anything ever be easy?

  
“Since it seems to be the former, I expect you have some questions,” Jesse said. “First: No, I don’t know where he is. Second: I do have information on him that I believe Stargate Command would be interested in getting their hands on. Third: If I do receive what I want, I might be able to find out where he is. Fourth:--“Jesse tossed a box from the desk to the bed, which landed next to Daniel.

  
He opened it and discovered nearly an entire ream of paper, all of it a single typed document. “Is this a list of demands?”

  
“It’s a list of one demand,” Jesse said, smirking. “I’m willing to hand over all the information I have now no matter what, as well as a friendly warning. What you and your own country’s program does with it would be up to you and your superiors.”

  
“Is there and abridged version?” Daniel asked, setting the document aside. He was very sure he needed to keep all his concentration on Jesse.

  
“A peace delegation headquarters. I have the money; you have the resources, the ancients were kind enough to leave a perfect—even movable site—for it.”  
“I think I’m confused,” Daniel admitted. Since when did aliens who made ultimatums want to actually help?

  
“Atlantis is conveniently on Earth these days, which would make the transition easier than before,” Jesse said, his tone hinting that he was struggling slightly to dumb things down for Daniel.

  
“As I have said, ever since I acquired Taiji, my…partner… business has been booming. I own several smaller business and companies and have financial ties with dozens more. I can fund this program and, while I do intend to use it for gain, you’ll find my methods of trading with other planets rather benign.”  
“And you want SGC to do the work,” Daniel said, finally catching up.

  
“I want SGC to be willing to join it,” Jesse clarified. “My position would merely be oversight; I would never have approached you and yours if I did not trust you to be able to undertake this venture, yet I do not intend to give up everything if I will be funding it. Besides, if you can find a better replacement, all you need is to convince the representatives of the planetary nations my presence is detrimental to the cause.”

  
“You’re serious?” Daniel asked. He had yet to see any hint of some evil plan, serious threat, or stupid idea. There was not even any metaphorical mustache twirling, merely a smug sense of knowing how to get what he wanted and enjoying Daniel’s bafflement that someone might bargain for something better for the both of them.

  
“Very,” Jesse said, a sudden heaviness to the word. “I am not about to risk this getting tied up in red tape, no matter how many people didn’t mean for it to happen. Once I get a guarantee that at least two planetary nations will agree to this and that Stargate Command will begin retrofitting the ancient city, I will give you my aid in finding your wraith.”

  
“How do I know you’re actually going to help?” Daniel asked. Why wouldn’t people get to the catch sooner when it came to negotiations?

  
Jesse chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “How many times have you and your friends gotten your hands dirty? How many times have the ends justified your own questionable and hidden means? Have you lost count?”

  
Daniel was silent, and very uncomfortable. The last time someone asked questions like this many people had died.

  
Jesse’s amusement brought him to full on laughter this time. “That was not meant to be an attempt at confrontation,” he said, still chuckling to himself as he did.  
Daniel didn’t find it comforting yet.

  
“It was merely to say that not even the best of us are spotless.” Jesse made a gentle, very casual, swooping hand gesture to indicate it was Daniel he referred to as ‘the best’ in that sentence. “Taiji arrived along with many Goa’uld transported here by members of what you know as The Trust. It had a different strategy of what to do on this planet, especially after learning of the Stargate Program. I was a perfect host, both my personality and that I already worked as a secretary for an IOA member—South Korea to be exact, a… preferable government. Taiji spent years looking into this, as well as more… exemplary projects, organizations, and businesses to work with for a considerable profit. What Taiji also did, was talk to one of the less ambitious of the Goa’uld.

  
“All he had to do was keep an eye on a certain part of the black market, and he’d receive an anonymous donation to pay for living expenses. He told me your wraith was suddenly up for sale, an offer that happened to be made just before he was moved from Atlantis.”

  
“Well, thanks for telling us. Better late than never I take it?” Daniel said. He wondered how this would get to being able to trust Jesse in holding up his end of the bargain. He wondered why all the explanation; Goa’uld who posed as Gods on earth for thousands of years didn’t have this much back story.

  
“I intended to buy him,” Jesse stated, again putting a sudden heaviness to his words. “I have put a great deal of money towards a multi-national project that the South Korean government has finished last month: a fully-functional, robot-operated, cloaked, beaming station. We have treaties with China, Russia, and are currently negotiating with Turkey to use it for transnational transportation. Countries entered will be alerted, yet any action taken to block the frequencies will be considered hostile and all countries who wish to use it will be required to take action. You were meant to be told this just after I had used the station secure him. The station has better security than your area 51 and would be much more comfortable for him. His agreement to the peace delegation was meant to create international pressure for the proposal.”

  
Daniel suddenly realized there might be a way he could have the upper hand in this conversation and jumped at the possibility while doing his best to be subtle. “So this is the only way to actually get this peace delegation to happen?”

  
Jesse smirked, indicating that Daniel had figured things out, yet hadn’t quite hit the nail on the head. “You of all people should understand. What your country offers is dying alone through painful starvation in a plastic box in a facility that might as well have a revolving door. What mine offers is the protection of at least three countries willing to do whatever it takes to protect the station, mankind, and him at the drop of a hat, purely to keep him in a spacious room equipped with books, cable, and even windows for him to watch the stars; he can even be fed if he behaves while around others.”

  
“I—wait, did you--?” Now things were starting to sound like their usual ‘we’re all gonna die’ song and dance.

  
“Yes,” Jesse said, returning to being smug. “At the moment, all I have is a theory and the means to test it—except for the actual wraith of course. My…correspondent was supposed to have contacted what he claimed were reliable scientists on Goa’uld technology, but he was recently found dead. I believe Stargate Command took over the investigation into his death.”

  
“I take it you’re not about to share this theory without more bargaining,” Daniel said, hoping he hadn’t clued into yet another major part of this strange plan.  
Jesse smiled and for Daniel wished he could speak to the ‘snake’ instead, as it would be more comforting. “I managed to convince the sellers to let me test my theory. I do not know who they are, where they are, or when they will let me take them up on the offer. If my proposal is accepted, we can discuss my ongoing help in this matter. If not, I will do my best to do this on my own without interfering. Either way, I doubt you would be able to find someone willing to feed him even with a cure.”

  
“I take it, you are willing,” Daniel asked. This made things worse. Whether he was fed or not, Stargate Command would end up doing nothing but discussing and covering up an ethics debate that would last for eternity.

  
“Yes,” Jesse said flatly. He leaned back and unlocked a drawer of the desk. He took out a sealed envelope, from its shape Daniel could tell it was lined with bubble wrap on the inside and from the size carried a CD or DVD. Jesse started to toss it to Daniel, but his wrist twirled back the way it went, his arm pulled back, and his long fingers tightening over the package.

  
Jesse’s eyes flashed bright and his voice changed. “Do you remember your wife’s son?” The words were spoken in Taiji’s deep, booming voice; there was no sense of Jesse’s smugness or inner smirk. Taiji spoke of somber reminiscing, regret and sorrow that hinted it was on the edge of desperation that could push everything into greater chaos if it felt that might silence the memories that haunted it.

  
“You mean Shifu?” Daniel asked, startled at the sudden change. Whatever exactly Taiji was, it hadn’t been wandering the globe plotting and scheming to find the best way the lounge in untouchable luxury; it had been running. If a symbiote could have sleepless nights, this one had been through too many.  
Daniel wondered, while he could trust Jesse….so far….did he care one bit for Taiji? The two weren’t the same by a long shot. Apophis had claimed to love Amaunet, but no matter the devotion, Daniel would have ripped the symbiote from the human’s neck and stamped it into a pile of sludge under his boot if he had the chance.  
“Jesse is willing to risk his life to aid you. These are his principles and his decision. I won’t stop him and, in fact, I admire them. He is also the godfather of a girl who has just entered college; I share the same memories of watching her grow up. I have spent centuries, one way or another, running and hiding from Goa’uld. Now that I finally have a chance to live without fear of them, there is still a risk that someone will take away any hope of being part of her family.

  
“I proposed the peace delegation as a concept, and Jesse helped with many of the details. The greatest hurdle, beyond the proposal being accepted, is a law that officially gives those native to other planets the same rights a human would have. The offer of peace will be hollow without it.”

  
Taiji tossed the package to Daniel and it landed squarely in his lap. “I chose you because from the reports, you’ve always known who best to shoot immediately and who to help...as well as the questions that will give you such knowledge. Whatever plans you intend to propose to your superiors, don’t watch that alone.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea what I'm doing.

Watching the DVD with others didn’t make things more comforting.

  
There was no sound to it, but six sets of subtitles: English, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Korean. It was a lot of work for something shot on a cheap handheld camera. Whoever had taken Todd either liked to work on a budget or was adamantly against being flashy and extravagant.

  
The interior of a moving van was lit up poorly, from the looks of it by a standing lamp, similar to the ones Dr. Goldstein’s team had used. The camera was zoomed in on Todd, sitting on the floor with his hands tied to a low crosspiece used to fasten furniture, a faint glint from the poor lighting showing he was held there with barbed wire.

  
It was immediately obvious that it wasn’t the loops of wire digging into his skin that were keeping him where he was—those were just a reminder. Though weak, Todd could still survive and repair more damage to his body than a normal human’s, which now made things worse for the wraith. His captors had been far less careful than they would have with normal hostage, no matter how violent. His coveralls, however, showed every bit of what had been inflicted on the wearer; there were bullet holes in the legs, large burns on the arms and collar, and long rips that had soaked up large quantities of blood. His hair had picked up its own streaks of blood, as well as what was at first thought to be glitter, but upon further notice were tiny glass shards.

  
Topping off the impression that this had been done by amateurs with too much time and luck was the duct tape across Todd’s mouth. Simple, cheap, almost obligatory in such a situation, the tape hinted at something else, that this wasn’t, in fact, simply people with the ability to surprise and kill trained soldiers. Just as someone’s gloved hand moved into view, the realisation dawned on the watchers that there was no need for the tape as Todd had no one to call out to. The tape was for this and this alone, something worthy of recording, something that would make the poor lighting and camera meaningless in its wake and purpose.  
‘Quite the oddity,’ the subtitles narrated as the gloved hands grabbed Todd’s long hair and pulled it back.

  
Todd wasn’t paying attention to the hand, but to something off screen… something that suddenly made the light change. Todd tried to pull back, the barbed wire cutting into his skin, from the obvious source of a bright orange glow.

  
The subtitles ignored the flame, a billowing orange tongue that lapped hungrily at the healing green skin, ‘A born killer with definite spirit. One needs little more than a car battery for him to follow directions.’

  
Todd gave up struggling as the flames outmatched his ability to heal, boiling through the membrane of his golden eye and fusing the consequent ooze to skin seared to a sickening black.

  
‘With a little creativity, you can have him expounding upon the vast information he has: nanite technology, advanced space flight, hacking coding, and even devices with the ability to teleport one across the galaxy, and other secrets of the American Air Force.’ was all the subtitles found worthy to say.  
The flame was cut off, its existence suddenly gone, leaving the place darker, more sullen, even starker than before. The gloved hand threw Todd’s hair disgustedly at his, the messy white locks falling over the destroyed half of his face. Todd hung his head and winced, not noticing that in his pain, his wrists were bleeding from the barbed wire, sinking so deep it had almost disappeared.

  
‘After just that, he spoke for twenty minutes without end. The best part is: There is always a way to start over if you still need more from him. That, however, is where we talk money.’

  
The screen of the laptop went blank, nothing but ominous and foreboding black.

  
There were only two men watching; one had crashed and shot his way through an infamously brutal war, the other with ageless skill at calm and dignity, neither felt well after watching the video.

  
“He really does have trouble making friends,” John said, crossing his arms.

  
Woolsey was not impressed. He didn’t feel words were needed to express how unimpressed he was. He let the silence do the talking.

  
“Well, on the bright side…” John started.

  
Woolsey raised an eyebrow after John’s pause went on for too long.

  
“Yeah, I got nothing,” John said. It was obvious whoever had Todd had done their homework, they just didn’t want to show what they’d studied up on and how. As much as he wanted to, as easy as it would be for him, he couldn’t say they’d cheated; Todd had no hand in this mess. It was easy to want to punch an alien, they were by definition not human and they weren’t animals. Only they’d mind and somehow knowing that they would mind would make the world work a bit better after you punched them. There were no aliens to punch, in fact, all they had was an alien to show them who he could punch. “So… this Jesse guy knows where Todd is?”  
“He will know,” Woolsey said. “He said he hasn’t been contacted yet and so far has been willing to tell us everything.”

  
“I’m guessing Jesse’s still really annoying when it comes to getting help,” John said. Aliens: Can’t live with them… and space would be pretty boring without them.  
“He’s asking for a lot, technically,” Woolsey admitted.

  
“Oh, I love ‘technically’” John said sardonically. “Isn’t this technically a matter of National Security? Doesn’t that mean we can just sic Ronon on him?”

  
“Not unless you want to start an international incident,” Woolsey said.

  
Now it was John’s turn to be silent.

  
“John…” Woolsey said, his tone the same as trying to coax matches from a young child who knew exactly how destructive they could be.“What?” John asked innocently. “All we have to explain is how bad it would be if someone else got their hands on a wraith.”

“What?” John asked innocently. “All we have to explain is how bad it would be if someone else got their hands on a wraith.”

  
“We’re already facing an international squabble over where to put him when we get him back,” Woolsey said. “We’re close to one over why we don’t have him already.”

  
“What’s the IOA say?” John asked. When he had to ask them for the best idea, he knew his luck was in the toilet.

  
“They’ve been doing nothing but fighting since they found out he was lost. Don’t expect an answer any time soon,” Woolsey said. It was obvious he was both glad he’d left before this happened, but also wondering if his presence could have stopped it. Most of it was squabbles over position and who had the power to do what.  
John made a disgusted noise and put his face in his hand. Someone had flushed the proverbial toilet. “Fine. What does Jesse want?”

  
“He wants the Stargate Program to run the operations of a peace delegation while he funds it,” Woolsey said. “His proposal has Atlantis would have Atlantis as the headquarters.”

  
John was silent for a while. “Was there some sort of evil part to this plan that you forgot to tell me?”

  
“Other than giving us a lot of work to do around here just to prepare for all that?” Woolsey asked.

  
“That’s it?” John asked. “The worst part of this is remodelling?”

  
“Unless you miss solving our problems by shooting people that much,” Woolsey said.

  
“As long as he doesn’t’ take away golf,” John said. “We’re not going to remodel the brig are we?”

  
“It wouldn’t matter. Jesse is going to move Todd to a beaming station in orbit. Unless he decides to help, he’ll be a matter for the South Koreans.”

  
“Wait, help?” John asked. “He just had his face fried off. He’s not going to be able to help if he wanted to, and he won’t.” Something about this statement bothered him. Todd couldn’t go with someone else. Todd was HIS wraith… not that he liked to clean up the messed Todd brought about, but he felt no one else should be taking charge of keeping an eye on him. It was personal and John didn’t know why. Most of him wanted Todd to be far, far away from him and his friends, yet there was a persistent part that bugged him constantly that said Todd shouldn’t casually be sent away where John couldn’t get to him. He had no idea where this part of him came from.

  
“Jesse says he has a way to cure the side-effects of being fed on by a wraith. That’s why he has an opportunity to meet with whoever has him.”

  
“What if we don’t give this guy what he wants?” John asked.

  
“He tries to find Todd on his own and leaves us to figure things out on our own,” Woolsey said.

  
“In other words, we either figure out how to pull a wraith out of a hat or give him what he wants.”

  
“First we need a hat,” Woolsey said. “Once this project is started, there’s no turning back on it. As soon as we can show Jesse the paperwork that it’s started, he’ll talk to us.”

  
“Somehow I don’t think it’s just going to be that simple,” John said.

  
“Undoubtedly,” Woolsey concurred. “We’re going to need to be prepared.”

  
“For what?” John asked. Great, more work they had to do. For being helpful, Jesse wasn’t doing anything.

  
“I’m not sure,” Woolsey admitted. “But you know Todd better than anyone else, so you’d know best how capture an angry, confused wraith without any casualties.”

  
“Yeah, that’d be my specialty,” John said. He missed when people who stole things were stupid.

…………….

Wraith do not cry. They do not weep. They do not whimper.

  
All they know to do is to scream in the wake of pain, scream until they surrender. They never ask ‘Why?', as they are beyond expecting an answer by the time they will believe you. All the ever ask for is their identity; they are wraith, never truly conquerable as they will always have something to cling to as they watch other break everything else of theirs to irreparable pieces.

  
Todd would never ask him, ‘Why?’ Something… something had inevitably happened, something between them had broken, snapped in half during their last conversation that John knew had made Todd give up on asking that question as futile. He’d thrown something away, something John never wanted him to. This was no misstep in the evolution of the mind, no being driven forward by hatred and fear, but a turnabout a looping-around back to something, something that sent a sickening wave of fear through John’s bones, though he had no idea why. Todd’s mind had gone somewhere it had been before, somewhere too dark on a map John though he had memorized and wandered into somewhere forbidden, not out of his own acts, but by John’s own decree.

  
He was supposed to find Todd. He was supposed to know how that far-too-human and not-human-enough mind worked. He was supposed to know him perfectly, what he’d do, how his tricks worked, where he’d go, what he’d say, and most importantly how to find him before he did all those things. He thought he knew those things, always knowing Todd was going to crash and burn and turn to Atlantis after sifting through the ashes. Now… now all his intuition would tell him was that Todd was going to curl up in the ashes until something new came by, even a chance to catch hold of one of the flames and truly burn alive.

  
All John had was one important piece of unhelpful information: Todd was not going back. All he knew that that no matter what, Todd was that if Todd sensed the opportunity to escape, the tiniest whiff of freedom, he’d take it and die in it. He was not going back to the van and he was not going to Area 51. This time, he’d set the world on fire if he had to just to stay away from certain parts of it.

  
He so desperately wanted to know what to extend in order to convince Todd not to fight him. There were no words, no bribes, no threats he could think of. The future held only the looming visage of the ruined half of his face with the now cold eye streaked down the sharp cheek blind to him while the other half, forever alien, forever weak and held together purely by determination and seeing nothing but fire.

  
There was a knock from somewhere and John realised he was sitting in his room, the lights dimmed, and holding his head. “Come in” he said, doing his best to be… himself. He always pushed things aside or grabbed them and punched them until they gave up; ad-libbing his way through everything and always ready to ad-lib something new the second something unexpected happened. He needed to talk to someone now. He had no ad-libs, not even a joke. Worst of all, the burned apparition waited just beyond his next thought to haunt him until he himself understood what it was like to lose everything but the last, tiniest shred of your soul.  
The doors opened, revealing Teyla. She waited for a second out of politeness before entering. “What are you doing?”

  
“I dunno,” he answered. “It wasn’t really this dark when I got here. What time is it?” He waved his hand, brightening up the room. It had been too dark to see his watch.

  
“Around eleven,” Teyla said. “I began to worry when the mess hall closed and I hadn’t seen you for dinner.”

  
“It wouldn’t hurt me to lose a few pounds.”

  
“I heard about Todd,” Teyla said bluntly. It was always a shock, at least a small one, to those outside of her clan, how unmoving she could be, especially when she always started out so soft and gentle. She wasn’t going to let him joke his way out of this, nor would she just dismiss it as a headache from stress.

  
“How much have you heard?” John asked.

  
“Enough to be worried about you,” Teyla said. She wasn’t going to let him dance around this.

  
“I’m just having a tough time not being able to play golf, okay?” John feigned, though admittedly being told he couldn’t hit gold balls into the bay due to pollution laws did aggravate him.

  
“I know you better than that, John,” she said.

  
“Well, if you know what’s going on, I’d like to hear it,” John said. He helped other people. He didn’t have problems like this. He didn’t sit in the dark or beat himself up because of parts of his own brain; he helped people fight that sort of thing… until now. He was always there to fight alongside his friends against inner demons but up against his own, he couldn’t even see them, let alone swing a punch.

  
“The last time you stayed in your room without eating or talking you refused to let Ronon kill Todd and left him on an uninhabited planet. He wasn’t what—“

  
“Kolya,” John interrupted. A sickeningly cold churning in his stomach told him she was right. Kolya had filmed his torture, not directly as revenge or torture, ultimately just to buy something petty that he wanted. John had returned to earth just to rewatch the same act, not of sadism, but of finding the pain of others so insignificant that it was the narration of the piece that needed the most attention. Kolya has stopped being human a long time ago and became some sort of symbol, some sort of force, something that coalesced in the darkness and chased you with shadows. That was what he as fighting and Todd had given up the fight against. Somehow, knowing they were fighting the same one made him feel so much better, so much stronger.

  
“I… I have no idea what to say, though,” John admitted, shrugging.

  
“You don’t always need to,” Teyla said, smiling. She could sense he’d had some sort of breakthrough, and at the moment, that seemed to be all he needed. “But I’m still here if you need anything.”

  
“So…uh, you wanna go watch football or something?” John asked. People. He needed people, human people and of all he human people he knew, Teyla was the best at driving away fears about wraith. She might even help him think of something useful. Even if she didn’t, she’d be a good start on getting back to ad-libbing his way to success.

  
“I’d love to,” Teyla said, leading him out of the room. “You’ll find Todd before he hurts someone, I know you will.”

  
Suddenly all his newfound clarity was gone. Something fired in his brain to tell Teyla, but he managed to stop himself. As intuitive and caring as she was, his gut told him this wasn’t for her. There was a reason he kept seeing Todd’s ruined face, but he didn’t’ know it yet. All he knew was that they were both running from some force they recognized as Kolya. It was pain for the sake of cheap bargaining, knowing it was cruelty and not believing in the slightest this occasion would count as even the barest of sins. It was that, but something in his head told him there was something wrong with the equation.

  
Just as he thought that, the voice in his head he always listened to spoke up. It was simpler to follow Teyla. She made sense. There was no need to complicate things one his own. There was nothing deeper or more complicated or another piece to his mental puzzle.

  
For the first time in his life, John decided to ignore this voice. This time, simplest wasn’t going to be best, easiest wasn’t easiest. He was going to learn what he’d been hiding from himself for once.

  
Because Todd was never going to ask why this had happened. Because wraith do not cry.

……….

The first batch of coffee made on Atlantis is always thrown out after the first cup. It’s made by people who were too tired to make it properly on the first go, replaced with something proper after the foul the first of the kitchen staff had imbibed their foul concoction, whose energy and taste would remain with them for most of the day.

  
Dr. Keller never minded the taste or any other properties anyone else unfortunate to start work so early in the morning fond unpleasant with the first batch of coffee. She was always there, right on time before the first batch was thrown out and replaced.

  
“Finally!” she heard as she was leaving the mess hall. John walked up to her, forcing her to check the contents of her thermos.

  
It was indeed coffee, too strong, very bitter, and badly filtered. This didn’t bode well. “You’re not usually up this early,” she said, making her confusion as obvious as possible in hopes he’d address it.

  
“An all-nighter isn’t going to hurt me,” John said, not acquiescing. “Besides, whoever we’re after had been doing their homework, so I thought I’d better get started myself.”

  
“You need help with research?” she asked as she started walking again. She hadn’t noticed she had stopped when John showed up.

  
“More like cheating,” John said, following her. “SGC sorta found someone who knows where Todd is… well, will know soon. I want you in the group when we talk to them.”

  
Dr. Keller hadn’t heard any of the recent news regarding Jesse or the DVD. All she knew was that Woolsey had taken Teyla, Woolsey, and John to the mainland and they’d returned empty-handed. Needing her to talk to someone who could find Todd only meant one conclusion to her: “How badly hurt is he?”

  
“Sort of…” John said, slightly uncomfortable suddenly. “I’d rather you didn’t try to help him, though.”

  
“John, I know the gene therapy didn’t work, but if there’s anything—“

  
“He’s not going to need a doctor,” John said, suddenly realising the need to clarify. “Not as soon as he’s going to need someone he’ll recognise as on his side, or at least not about to kill him. I know I’m always talking to him, but I think he likes you a lot better.”

  
Despite her genuine worry, she smiled at the compliment. She knew the bigger purpose of all this. Compassion wasn’t a weakness. Here was a perfect opportunity to show one wraith, maybe more if he ever returned to his own galaxy. “He is hurt, though, isn’t he?”

  
“Yeah,” John said, still hoping that if he never answered, she’d never try to figure out the full answer.

  
“How bad is it?” she asked, her smile fading slightly.

  
“He—There’s nothing you can do, I’m pretty sure. Even if you did figure out a perfect way to fix a really, really bad burn, I don’t want you to try. I want you ready to talk about how we’re going to get him with the least amount of damage to everything. You can do doctor stuff after that. I promise.”

  
“I understand,” Dr. Keller said, her smile returning. This was something Todd had needed for a long time, and he definitely needed it now. Whatever had happened, she could tell he was in trouble, and not by much, if any, of his own doing. She had no idea about the details and doubted she wanted to, but she had seen dozens of people so lost and afraid of the strange world they’d found themselves in and unable to escape soon enough that she couldn’t help physically. It had been her aid in helping them put other parts back together, part only they could find. “I think he’d understand this time.”

  
“Understand what?” John asked. Maybe he needed sleep more than he thought.

  
“I’ll tell you later,” Dr. Keller said. It was best if Todd told him; or at least that she gave Todd a chance. She had thought Todd as told John, but obviously he didn’t think there was a need. Shortly after she had compared herself and John, saying they both saved lives and the difference was the tools the used Todd had lost his entire crew. As dangerous as they were to humans, Dr. Keller know that even though the wraith wouldn’t admit it, it hurt to know he had been kept from saving those he knew, especially when someone whom he had been told saved lives for a living was responsible for stopping him. There had been no need to tell John, let alone believe her.

  
“Well, in the meantime, can you tell Rodney I want him in on this too?” John asked. “He can at least talk to Todd and stall things until someone else catches up.”  
“Sure,” Dr, Keller said.

  
John stopped following her and she proceeded happily down the hallway. He wondered what she had meant. He wondered why she seemed to understand the importance of someone Todd trusted being there to find him, no matter what the plan was in actually getting to him. He wondered that bothered her.  
All he knew was that as much as he needed to get to sleep, it wouldn’t answer his questions.


	4. Chapter 4

“This is quite the entourage,” Jesse said after opening the hotel room door. He backed up and gestured for the group to enter the room.

  
“You’re Jesse?” John asked in confusion. He could spot breasts hidden behind a lead wall, yet everyone had been referring to this person as ‘he’. Last he checked ‘he’s didn’t have curves like the ones he could spot form a mile away—so long as the person he was looking at had two X chromosomes.

  
“John, leave it alone or you’re going to hurt yourself,” Rodney said as Woolsey rolled his eyes.

  
“But—“ John started to protest.

  
“You’re not my type,” Jesse said, closing the door.

  
“I wasn’t trying to hit on you,” John said defensively.

  
“Even if you were, this proves even the best result of your efforts will result disastrously,” Jesse said leaning against a wall of the hallway as the others spread out in the main room.

  
“Oh ye of little faith,” Woolsey said, handing a thick envelope to Jesse, who glanced at it and tossed it on his desk. One sentence into the actual conversation and it had been decided that they were all screwed.

  
“I haven’t received anything from whoever has Todd,” Jesse said. “If they have kept hidden this long, they can’t have been stupid enough to find someone off the street to feed him and there is no way possible that they could have found a new volunteer they can feel they can trust. They are likely pressed for time to make a new video and hand him over to someone else. This means they are likely to use the event this weekend to prevent anyone from interfering with their plans.”  
“What happens this weekend?” John asked, earning the same reactions from Rodney and Woolsey as any time they had to explain something embarrassing to someone who didn’t know about earth.

  
This just made everyone else whom John spoke for even more confused.

  
Jesse laughed and crossed her arms.

  
It reminded John too much of exactly what had gone missing in the first place. Gallows humor; a smug sense of having enough tricks up his sleeve to keep everything to his advantage; yet, when it came down to it, he needed SGC to clean up a mess when something didn’t go according to his plans.

  
“This city is famous for taking nearly everything imaginable in the name of sexual freedom and revels in it. That is how it is on a normal day. This weekend the streets will be packed with… odd people, all celebrating diversity that holds a political stigma in this country.”

  
“I don’t get it,” Ronon said, summing up how most everyone felt.

  
“Everyone around looks insane and it’s the worst day to accidentally shoot a civilian,” Rodney said.

  
“That is one way to put it,” Jesse agreed. “Even if you kept it secret that you were from any part of the military, you could be facing years of disastrous consequences.”

  
“Got any good news?” John asked. “Maybe how we’re supposed to find him?”

  
“If they know about me, they know about my umbrella corporation,” Jesse said.

  
“The same one that will fund a new mission for Atlantis?” Dr. Keller asked.

  
“I promise no zombies,” Jesse joked. “Though perhaps a wraith might not be too far off in definition.

  
“In any case, beaming is out of the question. They’d know I funded the station and they’d have taken precautions. This leaves us with our own culture’s technology to rely on. Cellphones these days each come with their own GPs tracking device. You can track me as far as you can; I doubt they’d block it. The need their own cellphones and even if someone were tracking me, they still have the advantage of hostages, not to mention they’d be ready to take out civilians.”

  
“That’s not good news,” John said.

  
“Then perhaps you could augment that,” Jesse said, far too nonchalantly than he liked.

  
“How?” John asked.

  
“How do you expect to handle the situation without casualties?” Jesse asked, showing exactly why he was so smug: No one else had an answer, even a bad one.  
Ronon shrugged. Casualties were what he did best. “Why do we need him alive?”

  
“Firstly, I have plans for him,” Jesse said. “Second, I would likely be shot first if the began executing people. Third, I believe your superiors want to know what he told them. Fourth, he might have heard names of their superiors and he’d be more willing to tell us that dead enemies would be. Fifth, you’ve successfully avoided international problems so far; I doubt you want to tarnish that record.”

  
“What about the ethics?” Dr. Keller asked. “We can’t just shoot him, this isn’t his fault.”

  
“If you wish to show other planets you truly have the moral high ground, this would certainly be a good time to start,” Jesse said, his amiability suddenly gone and his words biting. “However, I thought you considered those optional, or do you no longer assume that he’d eat everyone instead of signing a peace treaty?”

  
“We needed the information he had!” Teyla said. “That man volunteered so he could save lives.”

  
“Ladies, please!” John said, only to make things worse.

  
Jesse stood up from the wall and growled, his arms crossed this time in anger and not in casual poise.

  
“At the risk of making things worse, she hasn’t,” Woolsey spoke up. “Given the sensitive nature of the materials on it, I only showed it to John and I restricted viewing to those he gave permission to. Teyla never asked to see it, but she did volunteer for this mission.”

  
“You of all people, then, should be aware that both the American and the international stargate programs are notorious for breaches of what most of the world has ratified as simple ethics. Taiji has been tortured by the Tok’ra and hunted by the Goa’uld, yet he chose me as a host because as much as this meeting rests on our running Atlantis under my funding, I will not give you a penny—let alone any more help in saving the wraith—if you abandon the reason you were chosen as the fifth race.”

  
“I understand completely,” Woolsey said.

  
“I don’t,” Rodney admitted.

  
John shrugged, not understanding either.“It means no more breaking the rules,” Woolsey said.

“It means no more breaking the rules,” Woolsey said.

  
“Aw, gee, that’s what we do best,” Rodney said sarcastically.

  
“The point is we still have the loopholes they provide,” Woolsey said. He saw no real problem with it. He knew how to use rules and words and perspective to his advantage. He could use rules to prove why he could break other rules. If he had the time, he could make people question gravity with nothing but a long list of legalese.

  
“What about a distraction?” Dr. Keller spoke up.

  
“I thought we just had one,” Rodney said.

  
“If you can distract them long enough for Todd to get out of the van, we can find him before he hurts anyone—including himself,” Dr. Keller explained.

  
“I’d oblige, but I believe I might be a bit… incapacitated at the time. What kind of distraction would you need?”

  
“Well, first it’d need to keep the door open,” Dr. Keller said, stalling in hopes she didn’t look like an idiot when that was as far as she’d thought on the plan. “And second it should be something innocuous or hidden.”

  
“Then we just need to keep the guards from shooting anyone and then figure out what this impossible item is,” Rodney said.

  
“I can keep the door open,” Jesse said. “If he’s as smart as your mission reports say, I can make sure he can fight his way out if he’s quick.”

  
“With what?” Ronon asked.

  
Jesse pulled out a thin mechanical pencil out of her breast pocket, twirled it for him to see, and then put it away.

  
Ronon smiled. “Yeah, I saw that movie.”

  
“Why don’t we just set something on fire and call it a day then?” Rodney asked.

  
“Would that distract them long enough?” Jesse asked. He was serious.

  
“Just so you know, this is why Ronon isn’t allowed to play Dungeons and Dragons anymore,” Rodney said.

  
“No, he injured someone with the dice,” Dr. Keller said. “John had his character set everything on fire.”

  
“I think an explosion would distract them a bit better,” Ronon said, feeling no guilt about the mentioned game.

  
“”Isn’t there a better plan that reckless property damage?” Woolsey asked.

  
Everyone silently stared at him, waiting for him to voice his own bright idea.

  
“Never mind then,” he said.

  
“The explosive would have to be mild,” Jesse said. “Your beloved C4 would pack far too great of a punch.”

  
“How mild?” Ronon asked.

  
“We’d still need to delay the explosion after you’re in the van,” Teyla said.

  
“I’d prefer if you didn’t destroy it, either,” Jesse said. “Though the more pressing question is how one would set it off without the locals noticing.”

  
“So you want them invisible?” Rodney asked.

  
“Most would be invisible in late June,” Dr. Keller said in a missed attempt to remind her boyfriend. She sighed, noticing the silence in the room. “Fireworks can be pretty distracting.”

  
“I know someone who makes them,” Jesse said. “If I have the specifics you want, she can make one for you.”

  
“What kind of specifics?” Rodney asked skeptically. “It can’t be that hard—“

  
“No,” Dr. Keller said adamantly.

  
“I think everyone would prefer if you left this up to someone else,” Woolsey said.

  
“This is ridiculous,” John complained.

  
“You lost a green alien at two in the morning and you’re asking someone with a slug wrapped around their brainstem for help to get him back on a holiday known for people dressing like rainbow-covered clowns,” Jesse said.

  
“They do what?” Ronon asked?

  
“Why?” Teyla asked.

  
“Right,” John said, ignoring the others. All their serious plans hadn’t worked. Some days you had to put all your faith into the rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. Curtailing the stupid curing the conversation was a lost cause. “So, where—“

  
“I can get you one if you like,” Jesse said.

  
“Somehow I’m not surprised,” Woolsey said. He had everything but something simple.

  
“I can get you fireworks and I can give you pencils. If you wait, I can get you a document form South Korea. If you want more, you’d be asking for my lipstick,” Jesse said. He could play a game of plans with amazing skill.

  
The problem was these strange, ever-annoying people had unpredictability o their side, as well as being able to recognize the best time to use it against someone. They were cheap, efficient, uncaring, and laughing all the way. Thinking about it gave John a similar sick feeling. No galaxy was without its notorious utter bastard, it seemed.

  
“Then what happens?” Jesse asked.

  
“Then we can finally get out the guns,” Ronon said. “We can hit them then, right?”

  
“I’d prefer if you did your best to avoid me, but the problem is mainly him and civilians,” Jesse said, nodding at him.

  
“They should have the problem of the latter solved for us,” Woolsey said. “As much as they make good shields, I doubt anyone smart enough to keep from being caught so far would let potential witnesses walk around. I don’t doubt they’d be using the event as a distraction in the first place.”

  
“Very likely,” Jesse agreed. “Do you have a plan beyond ‘run in and shoot them?’?”

  
“’Don’t get killed?’” Dr. Keller suggested, only half-jokingly.

  
“But you have one?” Jesse asked.

  
“Run in, grab Todd, don’t get shot?’” John suggested, joking even less.

  
“As long as you have one,” Jesse said, shrugging. “I can tell him to get out and get away. I can give you what I can. The rest is the reason I wanted your help.”  
“So what’s your plan if this doesn’t work?” John asked.

  
“’Don’t be taken hostage’,” Jesse said. “What’s yours?”

  
“Uh, ‘Don’t make things worse'?” John said. It wasn’t going to work in the slightest, he knew it. That meant they really, really had to depend on the first plan.

 …...

It didn’t work.

  
It really, really didn’t work.

  
John was wondering if maybe he’d completely misunderstood Todd. Perhaps it wasn’t Todd for whom things when sideways, but he and Todd merely happened to be present and hide things when the worst events happened. Perhaps disaster just followed Todd the way a moon follows a planet as it orbits something larger it can’t escape. Perhaps there was simply some logic to Todd John never understood and failed to realise was important.

  
It could have worked. It should have worked. They did everything right. It wasn’t his fault; it was… if only they’d been up against someone dumb.  
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t…. it wasn’t fair.

  
That was all he needed right now. Things were supposed to be fair. He didn’t know what that was exactly, but suddenly a wave of clarity washed over him. Suddenly everything was quiet, everything was calm, despite his surroundings. He’d grabbed the reigns of some great beast and instead of feeling closer to the turmoil and tumult, he felt nothing but a sense of achievement. He had a direction, a reason. He only knew that he was lost in retrospect, only in comparison to this feeling of having something so much better, so much greater, a way to end his own craziness.

  
It was still there, but now he knew there was a cure once he figured it out. The fact that it existed put his mind at ease, and that, to him, was the greatest step towards his goal he could take.

  
Of course, he couldn’t admit that. Especially not now.

  
Everything had gone well until Todd was out. Try as they might, no one could pin the problems on the wraith this time. His kidnappers had brought their own friends with their own plan. They had counted on the civilians, not as shields but expendables, a distraction of their own. They’d played John and his friends like a game of cards. They had let SGC know about their cheap brute force. They had even fooled Jesse, one who prided himself on being able to play the cards of life. It was a dirty, mean, tactic and it worked. If one hadn’t filled their minds with hate for them, there’d be room for admiration.

  
John though he could win by surprising them. They ought they could win by surprising him. Todd though had won by surprising them both.

  
The fireworks had almost worked. People cleared the area, fearing amateurs were setting off a display early in the day. It had certainly distracted those trying to hold onto Todd, as it almost gave John and the others time to move in. They had surrounded a parking lot and likely they were what had broken the spell of the distraction. He hadn’t asked the others but he could hear the sounds of Todd crashing out of the van and panicking in confusion just before he heard shots and breaking glass. That was when Dr, Keller started screaming over the radio, warning him of mustard gas.

  
She had bee right about it, but the mustard gas hadn’t been aimed at them. It was supposed to keep Todd from running off by surrounding him.  
Even running from the large yellow cloud, John could hear Todd running through the smoke, crashing into something blindly. All John could do was run the other way.

…………….

“John, where are you?” Teyla yelled over his radio.

  
“Uh… wherever Castro and Fourteenth is,” he answered.

  
He’d run all this way stopping when he was out of breath and out of clues. He had taken off after Todd, circling around the gas clouds and following the occasional sound of crashing. He’d lost the trail almost an hour ago, running after a vague footprint next to a piece of blood-covered barbed wire he’d found. He remembered firing at something growling and making noise in some nearby trashcans only to realise he’d followed a racoon at some point.

  
“How’s Jesse?” he asked.

  
“Whatever he did, it worked,” Teyla said. “He’s badly burned though. He’s got some sort of device.”

“Yeah, I heard about those.” John said, scowling at the fact that a nearby building said ‘Occupational Health.’ The universe was doing its best to mock him. “Doesn’t he know how to use it?”

  
“He’s fixing up the others first,” she said. “Do you have any good news?”

  
“I don’t have any worse news,” John said. “Except I’m lost.”

  
“I’ll ask Jesse how to find you when she--he’s done,” she said.

  
“Thanks. I’ll wait here.”

  
He wondered how dangerous San Francisco could be. He guessed ‘very’. He had never explained anything about earth short of ‘Don’t Touch’ to Todd; at best he’d seen the inside of one of Rodney’s comic books or a picture from a Calendar. John barely understood this crazy place, how could he expect Todd to survive here without causing catastrophic damage?

  
A city of millions of people and he was worried about the man-eating monster. He didn’t know why he thought he should.

  
Because life wasn’t fair, that was why. It should be, that was why.


	5. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot--5

“Officials are still working to clean up what is know as the Pride Attack—an explosion of high-grade mustard gas in a neighborhood parking lot that happened on the first day of SF Pride, a parade celebrating freedom of sexuality and expression. Some call it over-the-top vandalism while others are going as far as to label it terrorism. Police are still on the hunt for those responsible, even as the almost-week-long clean up nears an end,” the newscaster on the television said.

  
“While no casualties were reported and the number of hospitalizations was surprisingly low, the attack has had unfortunate consequences. Violence towards companies and individuals suspected of homophobia has skyrocketed, especially in the Castro area—a district in San Francisco famous for its pro-gay sites and people. The violence has yet to have any affect on the tourism, though many residents are saying they no longer feel safe to leave their homes, both due to vigilantism and fear of another anti-gay attack.

  
“Businesses are finding new strategies to bring customers back in the wake of these new unsettling sentiments. Rainbow flags and other symbols associated with gay rights have flooded department store windows, while the number of security guards has increased 11-50 percent in major shopping malls.”

  
John made a sound of disgust and Ronon changed the channel out of politeness.

  
“—and I think this is just the American people saying they won’t stand for this anymore. This is America standing up for itself finally and telling these people—with their Anti-American floats, with their anti-marriage propaganda, their rainbow parties, and a whole bunch of other things I don’t even want to know and I don’t want to say in case kids are watching—‘Get the hell out. We don’t want you here. You brought 9/11 on us and we’re not going to let you try it again, let alone celebrate—“

  
“Is this guy crazy?” Ronon asked.

  
“Yes, that’s why he’s on TV,” John answered. “Change the channel.”

  
“Teenage Mutant—“

  
“No!” John protested. “I really can’t watch anything green right now.”

  
“It’s a good show,” Ronon said, changing the channel.

  
“I don’t care!” John said. He’d been grumpy all week. It had started drizzling just after he’d spoken to Teyla on the radio after he’d lost Todd. That was five days ago and his mood had gotten stuck in the mud.

  
Woolsey had spent several hours negotiating with the police to get access to recent cases and he and Teyla were still sorting through them, looking for non-existent clues. It was an experience that could kick a human heart into a whimpering ball of sad ennui. For the last five years, John had bee out is space, seeing and touching the far reaches of the universe, away from earth. He’d been protecting this planet for years with war, while his only times to actually return to the planet were full of death. Yet he still had a soft spot for his home planet. He loved it. He cherished it. He still did, even as he met with hatred by those who kept people safe because they had no idea what he did and while he sifted through papers, each one something morbidly unique to his planet.

  
A planet he’s saved every singled citizen of had greeted him with robbery, assault, sadism, and had attempted murder. Now it was reminding him that this happened every day, along with a long list of other human atrocities he had no right or jurisdiction to resolve. The worst part was there was nothing human about the incidents. They had been reduced to text on paper, nothing but file after file, nothing individual save for the arrangement of letters to them. There were cold, still, hollow.

  
The worst part was that this hurt the aliens worse, and he couldn’t deny what his planet did. Not anymore. Ronon thought Earth was some sort of untouched safe haven: no wars, barely a trace of crime, everything simple and easier than he’d planets he’d been to. Now humans had just replaced the wraith, often with worse crimes that no one wanted to fix and just hoped would go away by wishing. Everything was on fire, everyone did something wrong and got away with it, everyone was having sex with someone they weren’t supposed to, and everyone was killing someone, yet no one seemed to be dead. Earth was dull in its cruelty.

  
It was worse for Teyla. To her, Earth was a paradise. Nothing could compare to a place teeming with people who could grow old, free from the wraith. Earth as practically sacred to her, and yet, finally touching the great planet that had given her so much hope, had left her dirty, lost, and confused. Humans abused everything they touched, taking for granted property, children, lovers, even their own lives. Some even enjoyed what they did. What was worse was that this wasn’t new. Earth never had an era of great peace spanning its surface. Never had these atrocities disappeared, only lessened on occasion and she felt she’d collected the blood of the victims on her hands for her near-worship of the place.

  
“Well, that’s the last of my half,” John said, tossing the last file in a sloppy pile. “Somehow I thought this would be easier.”

  
“Did you think he’d set something on fire so we’d know where he was?” Teyla asked.

  
“I thought he’d do something a bit more subtle than that,” John said.

  
“So this one wouldn’t be something he did, then,” Teyla said, tossing the last of her own pile away.

  
“How come he was always easier to find when he could be anywhere in the galaxy?” John asked, leaning against a bed.

  
“He kept bugging us,” Ronon said.

  
“Oh, right,” John said, scooping up a much smaller pile. It was cases that might have something to do with Todd. Then again, they could be raccoons or stupid teenagers. “I’ll take these to Rodney.”

  
“I miss that about him,” Ronon said. “Just that part.”

……..

Todd had no idea where he was. He had no idea where he’d been.

  
He had expected organisation with an unashamed flaunting of grandeur to the native planet of the Tau’ri. Instead, he found a loud, disorganised, haphazard, obsessed, conflicting mess. Monuments right next to each other displayed designs incongruous to each other. Shipped belched sickening smoke and most of their pilots couldn’t navigate in a straight line if their lives depended on it. Roads were full of trash and people were eating out of where the trash should have been. If it wasn’t broken, it was covered in lights; if it was broken it was covered with something uglier. Everything made noise. People made noise, people had devices that made noise, they had animals that made noise, monuments made noise, ships made noise, things on the roads made noise, even the smoke made noise.  
The only things that didn’t make noise were the trees: decorative shrubs on spindly sticks crammed wherever the noise and trash and smoke weren’t so the humans could pretend none of that existed.

  
He preferred the dark; there were fewer ships on the ground speeding past, no one thought he was in the way, and he had less reason to hide in the dark. No one here had seen a wraith, let alone come near some sort of battle. They were more interested in their own selfish activities than in anything about him. Constantly using the night to travel seemed like punishment, though, as it always reminded him of why he hated wherever he was. The stars were faint and often the sky was a blank brown, at best close the purple, but too shy to actually make it.

  
He felt safer, and preferred the look of the sky, in some of the more secluded areas, though they weren’t without their garish monstrosities. Giant steel statues of grotesque creatures stretched up towards the sky as if they were standing guard or put there to warn other cultures of this one’s ugliness.

  
Still, as much as he’d seen, ‘Near the ugly thing and not the other ugly thing’ was nowhere close to having a sort of bearings, geographical or directional. He was sure that whoever had designed this place…or these places…hated anyone who had to be in them. Roads stopped because a building happened to be in its meandering way, they curved awkwardly and turned at sharp angles suddenly and seemingly randomly while tiny hidden other roads branched off of them to lead humans on even more dizzying paths.

  
Wherever he was, it wasn’t quite quieter, but it was….more still. Humans weren’t around, but there was evidence they frequented this spot. Canisters of some sort littered the ground near a large metal box. He wasn’t too fond of those, but hiding amongst empty ones had recently been a benign habit.

  
He constantly kept an eye on the nearest box, in case a human did turn out to use it in a hostile manner or in case he needed to use it to hide, only to find something far more frightening than an approaching human. What frightens many animals, no matter their ability to reason or understand the universe they live it, is the unknown. Wraith are no exception. For the most part, when curiosity is mixed with fear, it is a concern that the status quo—their way of survival—is threatened. This, however, was a feeling of being overwhelmed, of mere helplessness as he had neither the force or the understanding to think is way out of this newness.

  
There was a whisper in his head, something that would speak up when the noise of the business around him would die down to it own version of silence, all the screams for attention letting themselves be ignored. He was used to hearing others, but this made a different noise than he was used to and only upon hearing it so strongly did he realize it was wrong—there were no other wraith her, no one to speak to him this way.

  
While the mysterious voice itself was frightening, what it was doing was the reason he felt overwhelmed and trapped again. The voice, slow and almost a feeling of vibration rather than a sound was reciting the painted scrawls on the walls of the box.

  
He stood back and let the voice sweep over him, concentrating on nothing and blocking out everything, including his own thoughts while staring at the writing.

SAILOR M SAYS NEVER DO HEROINE AGAIN

It was then that he was truly taken aback. He new what the gibberish was trying to say. He knew the source of its incoherency. Except… he didn’t know these things. It wasn’t his mind this knowledge came from. It was wherever the voice was coming from. It was more than just a voice.

  
Todd stood where he was and waited.

  
The voice said nothing. It put nothing more in his head. After a whole minute of nothing, though, there was a foreign feeling of being apologetic.

  
Whatever he’d found, it likely wasn’t leaving, but so far it desired to be helpful...though it had accomplished little in terms of safety. Todd figured he was on his own for the most part. Reading was no helpful achievement at the moment. If there was some message he needed, it certainly would be; Reading a sort of word out of one of Rodney’s ‘Comic Books’ had taken about an hour and ended in the physician screaming act him for almost as long. What he needed was a way to contact someone else, and only them.

  
That was when the voice spoke up. Again, it was less of words than a mental hint, an explanation of a memory, not words. He knew what the canisters were for, and he knew how to keep his message secret from the unwanted.

  
As he picked up a canister, he wondered about the voice. It wasn’t just a polite observer giving him information. It had taken information of his and used it to aid him. It barely contained words, nor even a real sentence, but it had given him reason to believe in its plan and not to wonder if it were a spy.

  
He wondered if he could talk to it, ask it what it was and see what it wanted in return.

  
All he received in return was a sense of alertness, which was not to be disturbed. Apparently, that was a topic for later, when he—perhaps both of them—was safer.

……….

Rodney ad pinned a large map of San Francisco to a corkboard and hung it on the hotel wall, replacing one of the pictures—he hid that in a drawer and figured the hotel wouldn’t mind, save for finding it an annoying prank after they’d left.

  
The map was dotted with dozens of thumbtacks of various colours that marked different likelihoods that Todd had been to the marked place, each with a date and time pinned to the location as well. Rodney found no order to them, no outliers to eliminate, no geography to take into account, no possible distractions or deviations—let alone reasons for them.

  
John’s fist slammed into it, setting the thumbtacks flying and smashing a hold through the corkboard and the wall. The board crashed to the floor and toppled over on the ripped map.

  
“He’s done Rodney,” Dr. Keller said, rolling her eyes.

  
Rodney crawled out from behind the bed he’d ducked behind. “What, are you a rockstar now?” he asked, standing up.

  
“John, you’re bleeding!” Dr. Keller exclaimed, grabbing at his hand and missing.

  
“Eh,” he replied. He couldn’t feel the large gash on his hand. It didn’t hurt at all. “It was a stupid idea anyway.”

  
“Oh course it was. Did you think beating it up would make it tell you where Todd is?” Rodney asked.

  
“Who cares?” John complained. “We’re just going to end up breaking things! And for your information, that--” He pointed to the broken board. “was a stupid idea.”  
“John, we can’t just wait here until he hurts someone—if he hasn’t already,” Teyla said.“You can punch him,” Ronon suggested.

“You can punch him,” Ronon suggested.

  
“He’s already going to shoot him,” Rodney said as he started to pick up stray thumbtacks.

  
“Can I punch him, then?” Ronon asked.

  
“This is why we can’t find him in the first place!” John screamed, almost frowning out the knock at the door.

  
“Because you’re crazy?” Rodney asked as Teyla opened the door.

  
“So, are you going to shoot him or not?” Ronon asked.

  
“Who is shooting someone?” Jesse asked as he and Woolsey walked into the room. He gave Woolsey a look expressing how he now wondered about the sanity of the group, silently asking him how concerned he should be for his physical health.

  
“I don’t, think things are that bad,” Woolsey said. Then he noticed the hole. “It probably looks worse than it is.”

  
Even Teyla understood the threat from Jesse’s concern; if the South Koreans took finding Todd into their own hands right now and right here, there probably would be casualties in the fight over authority and practice. “No one is going to shoot anyone,” she said, hoping to at least calm everyone else down. “John is merely…upset about the past. The last few days haven’t helped him.”

  
“I…see,” Jesse said, cautiously eyeing the hole in the wall. “Does this mean the wraith is in danger?”

  
John rolled his eyes as he began to calm down, mostly from the distraction that the gash on his hand was bleeding onto his pants an annoying him. “No, but we might have to dodge some punches.”

  
“Why?” Dr. Keller asked, finally managing to get a hold of John’s hand to tend to it. She wasn’t looking forward to a much surlier patient with thousands of years of experience in defending himself, even if it was from a bandage.

  
“Todd was… burned by whoever had him,” Teyla said. She was calm about it; as much as Todd was an ally, he was still a wraith. She’d seen them, felt them, far too much to be bothered by what little pity she had.

  
“Burned?” Dr. Keller asked. “How badly—hold still.”

  
“Half his face. Lost an eye,” John said. “Ow!”

  
“Hold still,” Dr Keller said. “I’d certainly call losing an eye, especially like that, ‘ow.’”

  
“More like ‘blech’” Rodney said. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier, I don’t want to calm down a mad wraith with no depth perception.”

  
“I don’t know,” John said. He didn’t. He should have an answer, but he didn’t. Why didn’t he have an answer? He thought he’d had an answer, but h couldn’t find it anymore. “I just thought.. I could handle that stuff.”

  
“You asked me to help because Todd knew me,” Dr. Keller said as she finished wrapping John’s hand.

  
“Yeah, but I thought I’d be the one doing the talking,” John said.

  
“Why?” Ronon asked. “All you do is yell at him.”

  
“Yeah, and we saw how well that worked out,” John said, feeling miserable now that his anger and adrenaline were spent. “I thought I’d have this figured out by now.”

  
“You are not the only one,” Jesse said, not letting his own disappointment show. He calmly kept a façade of confidence though the fact that his clothes and hair, as well as the weariness in his eyes, showed that the situation was wearing on him. They were hunting an alien through police reports, but he was the one telling other nations to let them. He’d spent the last five days talking to representatives of seven countries and three directors of the IOA, doing his best to convince them that anyone else taking over this mission or ‘offering help’ would just make things worse, all the while speaking with the South Korean president about the beaming station and diplomacy over it with the United States. Hassles of the every day did nothing toward him keeping his sanity. “Could I perhaps borrow the colonel for a moment? You’re free to punch me if it makes you think it will help. I’d rather not be shot, though.”

  
“Is this going to take long?” John asked. He didn’t need to waste more time on something that he might not care about in the first place. “Because I don’t really go for yoga or whatever.”

  
Jesse laughed, a pathetic, hollow attempt at a light and cheery mood. “If I thought that were so great, I’d merely have invested in gyms.”  
John shrugged and walked out onto the hotel balcony and Jesse followed. Everyone else stood there, wondering what to do after the door had closed. Now they had two problems on their hands that they couldn’t solve. Sure, the answers had seemed easy for both of them, but the universe never turned out to work that way. It wasn’t fair.

  
Rodney sighed. If there was one thing he had learned about this job, it was that demand always piled up, no matter how finished you were with your first project. If there were two things he had learned, it was that nearly everything about the stargate programs—whichever he had found himself working on—was just plain cleaning up. He could at least start with the thumbtacks.

…………..

“The others are not fond of the wraith, are they?” Jesse asked.

  
“Well, Rodney’s scared of most things, Todd once threatened to eat Woolsey, Teyla’s people have been killed by wraith for years, Ronon’s a runner—that when—“  
“I’ve read your mission reports,” Jesse interrupted.

  
“Right,” John said. “So why the rhetorical question?”

  
“Do you think any differently about him?”

  
John shrugged. “Well, I feel kind of responsible for him… Just because he told us about the hive ship doesn’t mean he can be trusted, but…I don’t think he deserves to be dumped in Area 51. I know it’s stupid, but I’m worried about the giant alien that eats people. I think earth’s worse for him than the other way around.”  
“What do you intend to do when you find him?” Jesse asked.

  
Jon shrugged again. So far, it seemed to be his best tactic in the conversation. “Dunno. I’ve never been that good at planning like that. I just make it up as I go. So far threatening him has worked, but I don’t think it’ll work after all this.”

  
“There is an alternative to area 51,” Jesse said, leaning against the balcony railing.

  
“The brig on the beaming station?” John asked. “I don’t think he’ll find that an improvement. Mean, I’d sure love cable, but doubt he’d be interested. Plus, I think everyone would want it free for someone less dangerous.”

  
“I was referring to somewhere he could enjoy a view of the stars, if he wanted,” Jesse said.

  
“Where would that be exactly?” John asked.

  
“Back where he belongs,” Jesse said. “There was a reason he was important leverage for the peace delegation. Both he and I know about the cure; the importance is in volunteers, not in safety anymore. The more the humans resist, the more the wraith fight back; the hungrier the wraith get, the more the humans fight back…he could help but a much more pleasant and very quick end to that.”

  
“I don’t think they’d be all that interested,” John said. “Atlantis isn’t really known for handing out cookies—at least not safe ones.”

  
“That would be a good reason to make this an actual rescue,” Jesse said. “Without breaking the rules—the important ones where someone ends up dead or walls are filled with holes, the little ones are fair game.”

  
“So what’s your plan?” John asked.

  
“I don’t have one,” Jesse said. “I make things up as I go, as well. I adapt to what I know. That was why I thought it would be best to ask your help. Taiji trusted me on it because no matter what he could do, I was chosen for the morals it had to give up to achieve what it had to. I trust you because you can do what I cannot, even with all my money and connections and offers.”

  
John smiled at the insinuated compliment. “You’ve got everything planned out, don’t you?”

  
“Enough to know I can rely on you,” Jesse said, opening the door to the room.


	6. Chapter 6

“What is it?” Jesse asked. He wanted to know why he had brought John and Rodney here, but he had only been told it was too important to be here to explain. He didn’t expect an answer now. “So… wraith like trains?”

  
John had demanded not only a ride, not only that Rodney—who also had no idea why John was so frantic--join him, but that this small area of a train station be under military watch for a few hours.

  
As world had gone back to its routine, all the while thinking these three people were insane, they stared at the invaluable crack in the wall they had spent a week trying to break down without anyone’s notice. A proverbial light was shining through a gap only two of them could see—they hoped—and they it would soon lead them to what they were looking for.

  
“They like to write on them at least,” John said.

  
“I think he’s just been sniffing paint,” Rodney said. “He wrote a bunch of gibberish.”

  
“Can we just assume he’s not accidentally on drugs and try to figure out what he wrote?” John asked.

  
“Then he’s just being weird on purpose,” Rodney said. “And where’d he get paint?”

  
“Maybe it’s upside-down,” Jesse said, trying to be helpful.

  
“Then it really would be gibberish,” John said.

  
“Wraith is derived form ancient, but it doesn’t work that way,” Rodney said. “We could see where this car came from and check that station.”

  
“If he just wanted us to meet him there, he wouldn’t have been so cryptic,” John said.

  
Jesse sighed loudly. “He spent all that time in your brig and you never once told him what a phone was.”

  
“Who would he call?” John asked. Great, now two aliens were being cryptic. Maybe they both had sniffed paint.

  
“I left a piece of paper attached to it with your number. I thought he’d figure out the rest after pushing the numbers,” Jesse said, rummaging through his bag. It looked like some sort of manly purse and John thought there was something different about it than before, though it was probably just the light and fumes getting to him.

  
“Why would he have your phone?” John asked.

  
“He took it with him,” Jesse said, pulling out different phone than before. It was a black model with a tiny keyboard that slid out.

  
“Well, that’s something about Todd I never wanted to know,” Rodney said, shaking his head as if he wanted to knock the mental image loose.

  
“I told him to,” Jesse said, holding up the phone. There was a loud click from the camera of the phone.

  
“So he still has your old purse?” Rodney asked.

  
“I have no idea,” Jesse said, still typing. “It’s not like I expected him to use the breath mints.”

  
“He could use some,” John said.

  
“You’re not trying to call him, are you?” Rodney asked. He hoped there was a sane answer despite what had previously been said.  
Jesse rolled his eyes and shook his head. “He’s not going to know how to answer it,” he said, putting the phone away. “He thought it would make a better shield anyway.

  
“I e-mailed the writing to Dr. Jackson. If it really is gibberish, he’ll know.”

  
“Oh, great, not him,” Rodney complained as Jesse mumbled about incompetence from phone companies.

  
“Would you rather check every place he could have gotten into paint to sniff?” John asked.

………

Jesse had spent the days with Woolsey, sharing the hotel room. Time passed in an unimpressive, yet dignified mutual ignorance, neither one recognizing the other in the room save for a convenient absence when the other could possibly be in a less compromising situation. While the others had found some reason to use the television, the device remained still, silent, even dusty as the two did nothing but pour over paperwork and phone calls. Neither spoke much beyond simple questions about the others work that might pertain to theirs. The closest they came to interacting as mere people was the sharing food and deciding who paid.  
Thus, as Jesse’s phone rang and her caller showed obvious sings that they were from SGC, all Woolsey did was look up from his work to see that she had a pen close by before returning to it.

  
“Hello?”

  
“This is Dr. Jackson. I figured out what Todd wrote. Even though the wraith alphabet is derived form ancient, they took their language from the humans and—“

  
“Are we going to be on the clock because of this?” Jesse asked in the same tone as if asking when the report would be on his desk.

  
“No,” Daniel said, disappointed.

  
“Then please continue.”

  
“They acquired the actual language from the humans they hunted, but developed their own vernacular, so the term belongs purely to the wraith culture. I had to look in left over wraith technology Atlantis had brought back to even find it in context. The closest translation would be ‘ship graveyard’. The rest was just copied down; I don’t think he knew what any of it meant or that parts were covered up. He’s near the San Francisco campus for the College of Arts and Crafts, wherever that is. By the way, thanks for letting me talk.” Throughout his speech, bits of giddiness at finally being listened to had poked through.

  
“I find it quite interesting,” Jess said, not realizing he was smiling at the phone. Everything intrigued Jesse—or possibly his dormant partner and the blend had left him with a little interest of his own; not even he knew for certain. “However, now I need to find directions.”

  
“I can help with that,” he said.

  
Suddenly there was a noise from the phone as he simultaneously hung up and the device received an e-mail. It paid to indulge others now and then.

……

Something strange was going on… strange for this place. Hours ago, the humans that frequently filed in and out of the nearby building had all left. Todd knew extremely little about the human here and had relied on stealth until he felt confident a certain group was likely to ignore him. He had never risked exposing his presence to these, given their numbers and how varied the members of the groups were. He had, however, taken not of the usual group comings and goings and this was not the usual time for the occupants to leave.

  
The other buildings that surrounded his hiding place had become quieter as well. They were always sealed off to the outside, but they were full of noise and were always pumping something foul out into the road during the day and long into the short nights. They had gone silent just as the others had left, though, to his knowledge, none of the buildings had anything to do with each other. They were practically separate worlds in their own stars system, alone and ignorant to each other.

  
Things were far too still for Todd to feel safe, yet he had no idea if he should leave. All heard was the distant sound of poorly steered traffic. The world around him seemed calm; there was nothing ominous about the emptiness. He had decided to stay where he was, leaving now might raise more suspicion than leaving when everyone else left, and that had already been already a choice he did not want to risk.

  
He stopped contemplating whether anyone from Atlantis had found his message. It either had worked or it had not worked; he did not need to be distracted by false and misguided hope when he should be focusing on surviving as he constantly moved about the never-ending city.

  
Suddenly a loud noise rang short and loud as something boomed just above him, heralding that something exploded.

  
Todd shot to his feet, only to stand in confusion as a thin drizzle of color rained down on him and only on him. It took him only a second, but a second too long, to realise someone had shot the can of paint that had been resting on a large box just above him. The wrong people had found him.

……

John grabbed Jesse’s arm and lunged at the ground as a bullet pierced its way through a nearby box car.

  
“That’s a good sign,” Jesse said, not a hint of sarcasm in his voice as he stayed down, waiting for John to tell him it was safe to stand.

  
“I think I hit your head too hard doing that,” John said, helping him up.

  
“We know they haven’t found him yet,” Jesse said.

  
“I don’t think I like your version of good news,” John said as he walked off and turned a corner.

  
Jesse had insisted on coming with the group, who were all surprised John didn’t argue. The lot full of boxcars was easy to spot, and was easer than usual as the familiar sound of gunfire rang out. John immediately sent everyone to go after whoever was shooting while he and Jesse were to find Todd before things got messier than they already were.

  
Jesse wasn’t wasn’t stupid, either he knew to follow John’s instructions exactly and not get in his way, or Taiji knew and Jesse followed his advice. He was, however, afraid. John could practically hear Jesse’s blood race like that of a frightened rabbit at ever shot, even those in the distance. It wasn’t brains that kept him from panicking, it was instinct and fear. When one had experience in firefights, those who never knew baptism by fire are always easy to spot. Jesse was immediately driven to John’s protection, knowing his ability to fight well had practically become part of him down to the cells.

  
It was in moments of instinct, where the bodies knew better than the minds that something dissolved away. At each gunshot, reality ripped itself apart and the two knew just how much they needed the other, not as people, not even as souls, but as concepts.

  
Jesse housed a refugee, a thing that had lost it’s ability for ethics nearly entirely and clung desperately to its empathy, had restored the creature even in the use of the knowledge it repaid him with. While so determined to go forward, fear always chased him into hiding. It was not naïve idealism that kept him from going back or forward, it was merely an inability—something he had never been born with and he never learned to compensate for.

  
John couldn’t stop going forward. It wasn’t a direction; it was a need, part of his nature. Yet he had no goal, merely an impetuous urge to never stop—something not created by a thought or even emotion but something that ran deep in his bones and muscles. He had never looked back and thought he needed a goal; all he ever thought was that he couldn’t have not moved forward, no matter the hardships it brought. The Air Firce as given him what he lacked and sorely needed, given his innate nature: a direction. Once he was in charge, however, he had to give himself a direction. He still had no true goal, save for whatever he thought could keep him moving forward. Until now, he had never though a direction was al that necessary.

  
Al they needed was to stay close to each other and so would their aspects, complimenting each other to gain the trust and safety of someone else… someone who had just found them.

  
John returned from around the corner, noticing the uncharacteristic actions of Jesse. He realised this wasn’t a situation that hinged on him, despite what happened next.

  
“Sheppard?” Todd asked. The wraith was often hard to faze, which would have made moments like this pricelessly adorable if it weren’t for the gunfire that seemed far too close for comfort when one needed to carry out a calm conversation. Todd was not wondering why John was here or that he had indeed found the message and tracked him here despite the vagueness of the direction, but why he was here with another familiar human—one who did not look the way they were supposed to.

  
“Don’t worry, we’re friends,” John said, reaching out slightly. “Is that paint?”

  
Todd backed away immediately. Although he had misinterpreted John’s words, it’s was the movement of the human’s hand that chased him back. Asking for help did not mean he was going to take any of it John offered. He’d seen the decisions John had made in his behalf and he was not willing to be spoken for again, even out of good intentions.

  
“I am impressed by the duct tape, myself,” Jesse said. “I asked to join him.”

  
If there was one thing to honestly fault Todd for, it wasn’t his ability to adapt. He always found a way to survive, be it luck or cunning, offense or hiding, trickery or just plain stubbornness to keep from being the first to give in. One of the few things he’d learned quickly while hiding within the city was how to procure new garments, though it was quite obvious he’d panicked during the lessons. He had obtained an iconic rainbow shirt, which was somehow too big for him, as were his jeans—which showed signs of both having spent some time both in a street and up a tree—which he had used duct tape to do his best to adjust. One couldn’t fault him for creativity either, apparently.

  
Todd turned to cautiously study Jesse, who smiled, assuring him that he was correct in that his health was no mere illusion.

  
“I am not going to your Area 51,” Todd said, sternly. Somehow, he seemed much more serious with only one sternly half-lidded eye as he focused on John. The marred half of his face had been covered by his long still-matter hair, a curtain hiding most of what little expression he deigned to give the inhumane species.  
“You don’t have to,” Jesse said. “I own a place that would have a secure room. You can learn, be entertained, be fed—“

  
“I am going to no prison,” Todd said, backing away again and making it clear he was about to take off on his own again, this time without a message.  
“If you want to go back—“ John started.

  
“I wish for you to keep your promise, Sheppard.”

  
“What, now?” John asked. Todd had used his name, there was no way to get him to back down form something when that happened. All this time, John thought he’d be happy to get a free pass for the past weeks of chaos. “Okay, I admit you’ve been squirreling around, but do you want a band aid maybe? A belt? You’re shoes don’t even match—did you roll in something?”

  
“That is how San Francisco tends to smell,” Jesse commented before ignoring the conversation completely.

  
“I am not interested in your city or your offers,” Todd said. “I find your petty need to restore my dignity offensive; they are nothing but more empty promises. Why do you keep from me what you insisted you would give to me? At least tell me what kind of hatred it is that denies a punishment I deserve when I wish it in person.”  
“That’s not what I was trying to do!” John said, holding his temples. All he’d meant to do was to tell Todd there was a better place for him to stay and possibly even leave. He wouldn’t have bothered, he wouldn’t even have cared if he had actually thought he wanted Todd to be somewhere he’d enjoy—somewhere where everyone else was safe, but that didn’t rule out Todd’s opinion entirely. It wasn’t difficult because no one would find a compromise, not anymore. It was difficult because he couldn’t talk to Todd because he was too selfish. He didn’t want to know that Todd thought he hated him. Acquiescing was the only way to prove he didn’t.

  
Now he felt both like a jackass and an idiot. What had he expected to do, have Todd walk in the front door of the hotel? It’s not like anyone would let Todd use the shower to clean himself up. At least Jesse could work something out about clothes, probably.

  
John had failed to notice Jesse had suddenly gone still. A quiet had settled around the group, surrounding them and only now had one noticed there was no escape. What he did notice, was a sudden noise: an angry, almost territorial roar of a car, the sound bearing down on him just before the machine. Todd was out of reach intentionally, fearing he’d lose his ability to make demands if he were within arm’s reach. John lunged, grabbing for the wraith, never once expecting Jesse to suddenly choose a different direction.

…………

Todd fled immediately, running through the strange maze of metal boxes as the vehicle slammed into a pile of two of them. He kept running, never looking back, not even when he could feel the heat as the contraption burst into flames on the other side of the stacked boxes. He could hear one of the boxes crash towards the fire, but all he did was run until the bonfire began to rain hot debris upon him and he ducked to the ground.

  
He quickly shot to his feet again, barely taking the time to swat away something that threatened to set his hair on fire. Just before he could start running again, something tiny and sharp struck him in the neck. He had barely managed to reach around his neck and fumble through his messy hair and pull out the offending object before another struck him, burying its thin tip deeper than its predecessor.

  
Todd barely managed a glimpse of the thing—a long needle with a fluffy bit on the end—before wobbling slightly and suddenly losing his vision and crashing to the asphalt.

  
The last thing he heard was something smashing on the ground, as if it had been dropped from a great height or thrown with great speed.

………

“Hwangyong hamnida.”

  
Broken.

  
Shattered.

  
Pain.

  
John knew his legs were broken. He could feel how thoroughly they had been smashed. He could hear bone scraping along the cold, steel floor. He could feel himself bleeding to death.

  
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Not now. Not yet. Not alone.

  
“You are in serious need of medical at-ten-shonn.” Above him was a robot, crude despite the latest advances. Every motion it made was smooth from ball-bearings and stopping on a dime, pausing just long enough for the human eye to notice before another movement was made. Her bright eyes, synthetic skin, delicate hair, and fancy dress Korean dress did nothing to brighten the station. The colors of her uniform and headdress didn’t’ even bother to fight the bland, unfeeling darkness, giving up and whimpering without a try. Everything about her was as cold and lifeless as the rest of the place, which looked to have been made of metallic shadows. “I am assessing medical options. You will be beamed to the best medical facility in…three seconds.”

  
“Where’s Jesse?” John asked between gasps. His vision was going too quickly. “Where’s Todd? We got him, right?”

  
“Morugessumnida,”it said.

  
John couldn’t see it, but he could feel the beam begin to engulf him. This wasn’t’ how it was supposed to be. He wasn’t supposed to leave like this. Not now. Not alone.

  
“Annyonghi kashipshiyo.”


	7. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot--7

John woke up to the familiar sensation of morphine: a fuzzy lining to reality. Like a pillow between him and it that made him and it. He could smell a strong scent of disinfectant. Neither of these promised anything good. The morphine was strong and the smell was stronger. He didn’t doubt he’d made a huge mess bleeding everywhere, but even before he opened his eyes, he knew this wasn’t going to result in just a few hours lying in bed and playing Nintendo.

  
“Oh, boy,” he heard Carson say as he slowly focused on the doctor. Before the image cleared completely, he could tell Carson was holding something back from him, something important that he had to say, but didn’t want to. John wished someone else had been there to greet him, someone who could hide their feelings better. This wasn’t the day to wake up to bad news immediately.

  
“What day is it?” John asked.

  
“Saturday,” Carson said, happy to have the opportunity to sneak away from whatever disaster he didn’t’ want to talk about. It showed

  
“Cough it up,” John said. He had never been a fan of people hiding things from him. Not even for his birthday. “Why was I out for so long?”

  
“You were bleeding pretty badly,” Carson said. “And you had already passed out with a head injury by the time you were beamed in here. That robot has pretty good aim. Not good at Engish. Was she pretty?”

  
“Carson, please,” John said. How in the world did one get a headache on morphine?

  
“She sounded like a cute lass over the comm,” Carson said.

  
“Carson!” John yelled. “Something is wrong and it’s not that we didn’t get Todd. Tell me what happened.”

  
“Your right leg was badly smashed up. I managed to reconnect most of the knee, but I could save the rest. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t do anything else.”

  
John put his face in his hand and let out a long sigh.

  
“John, there wasn’t any alternative,” Carson said.

  
“Shut up,” John said. He wasn’t angry. Not at anything physical. He didn’t know if he should be mad at fate or disappointed in himself. He decided to settle for a little of both until he could rule one out or a third option showed up. He wasn’t mad at Carson, but the doctor seemed to be trying to take the blame and hurting himself like someone stabbing themselves wit a knife they took from a child. He couldn’t handle Carson feeling bad for him. People weren’t supposed to be burdened by him, that wasn’t how things worked. “Just… don’t.”

  
He couldn’t stand being a burden. He had left his family, thinking they’d sort out his loss in a few days. It was hell seeing just being there was a problem. He couldn’t apologize for who he was, but that didn’t mean t wasn’t torture. This time he couldn’t run away. This was where he needed to be this was his whole life. It wasn’t what he knew how to do, it was what he knew to do. He couldn’t walk away form his own niche, especially given everyone he’d already screwed up with.  
“Why isn’t anyone else here?” John asked.

  
“They didn’t want to tell you,” Carson said. “Rodney convinced Jennifer she wasn’t actually up to it and Ronon and Teyla said they wouldn’t be able to handle breaking it to you. Thhey also thougt you’d react best if I told you.”

  
“Well, I’m going to react to them now,” John said. “Get me a wheel chair.”

  
“John—“

  
“Carson, I’m getting up and going back to work and you can’t stop me,” John said. Things were missing. People, direction, parts of the world, parts of him, part of who e thought he was. None of it had to do with his leg. That was just holding him back. Maybe it would always try, but he was tried of letting things hold him back. Confusion, loss of direction, lack of clues, orders from other people… his leg would have to get in line.

  
“I’m not getting you one because we don’t have one,” Carson said. “The best I have is a pair of crutches you can use. It’d actually be a good idea to get some exercise soon, but not yet. Please just stay where you are, I think there has been enough disasters so far.”

  
“Fine, but send someone in here,” John said.

  
“Aye, I can do that,” Carson said. “But you do your best to relax. This isn’t going to be easy.”

  
“Nothing has been so far,” John said, leaning back and sighing. Carson left. John understood why losing him had hurt Rodney so much. When he was gone, he was practically just around the corner, assessable and comforting and never truly gone. Todd had been like that; he hasn’t been a friend, but he was always there. One could always find him and he’d always come back. John hadn’t thought that would ever stop. He didn’t think SGC would take him away, or anyone else for that matter. He’d let pride and anger do something wrong. He didn’t realize he was chasing Todd away, not with the fear of his threat, but by never following through. He wondered if Todd was right, that prison on Atlantis was just the same as prison somewhere else.

  
He never thought it was; it was to protect others, not to hurt him. Maybe he had. Maybe that wasn’t the point. Maybe the point was prison, never seeing the stars again, never knowing what it was like to fly for yourself.

  
It had to be. I had to be because John knew he’d never understand anything else. His wings and stars were gone. His leg was gone. Unless he did something, his life was gone, and Todd was going to know the exact same thing worse than he would.

  
They weren’t equally destroyed yet. There was still time to set the wraith free and give him back his own skies. It wouldn’t fix him. It wouldn’t fix Todd. It wouldn’t fix anything. He didn’t need to fix things. He needed to make things fair.

  
Todd had made the mistake of accepting things. John had made the mistake of forgetting what he was supposed to do. He had to make things right. No one else was going to and the universe wasn’t going to pick up the slack. This time he was going to kicked the universe’s butt and tell it to get to work.

…………

Rodney had no idea what to do or say to John. He still barely knew how to handle have friends. He knew physics, not people. Jennifer’s advice wasn’t any help at all. She had told him to ‘be himself’. She was a doctor, shouldn’t she know what to do? She should at least know how badly being himself would be.

  
Sighing, he entered the infirmary. At least John should know how bad he was at this kind of stuff.

  
“Took you long enough,” John said, having finally gotten his hands on the infirmary’s game console. “I could hear you panicking behind the door.”

  
“Y’know, you get a higher score if you just connect three at a time,” Rodney said, pointing to the game.

  
“You waited until I was on level 93 to tell me?” John asked. “You didn’t get Todd, did you?”

  
“None of use even saw him,” Rodney said. “Were were lucky we got out of there in time.”

  
“Oh, yeah?” John asked. He was going to beat Rodney to death with the game console if he was whining at him about a parpercut.

  
“Ronon thought someone fired a bomb, but it turned out to be nerve gas,” Rodney said, quickly beating John’s underestimation to a whimpering ball. “SGC’s not happy that they have to do another clean-up job.”

  
“Where’s Jesse, then?” John asked.

  
Rodney sighed. It was his own personal sigh of having to do the worst of the dirty work and that it needed to be done immediately before everyone ran around like chicken with the heads cut off—usually literally. “You want the long version or the short version?”

  
“I’m not going anywhere,” John said. “Give me the long version.”

  
“Not even the robot wanted to beam up a burnt pizza,” Rodney said.

  
There was a long silence. Not event eh buttons on the console wanted to bring attention to themselves by making noise.

  
“I could have designed a better robot,” Rodney said.

  
“What? Fran? No way, the one of the station looked a lot better.”

…………...

Atlantis hadn’t been bustling with people since it’s habitation by the ancients. The chance for the humans to do so had passed. Many of those still stationed on Atlantis had been recalled home. There was almost a quiet, palpable hum to the place now as if the city were trying to replace the feel of constant footsteps.  
No one noticed the sound of crutches amidst the quiet. No one wanted to.

  
“Well?” John asked, quickly making his way to Woolsey’s desk from the door.

  
“You’re early,” was all Woolsey could say. He had no idea the etiquette required for this sort of situation.

  
“I can leave and come back if you want,” John said impatiently. For having been so seriously injured, h had lost half a limb, he wondered why the worst so far—beyond sheer surprise—was boredom. He wished someone would do something.

  
“I’ll try to refrain from small talk,” Woolsey conceded. “Retrofitting will start tomorrow.”

  
“So that’s why everyone left,” John commented.

  
“Exactly. The changes will be minor, but the fewer people we need to have around, the fewer people we have to inevitably get in the way or complain.”

  
“Well, I’m glad it’s not just me,” John said. “Does this mean Rodney left already?”

  
“He’ll be needed for most of the work and Zelenka will be in charge,” Woolsey said. “He’ll be complaining enough for everyone.”

  
“So why’d you need me?” John asked. He tended to think of himself as a hero, not a mechanic. He didn’t think heroing would be needed in this situation.

  
“I take it you’ve heard about Jesse?” Woolsey asked.

  
“Yeah, Rodney told me,” John said.

  
“I wish it had been with more tact, as it turns out there’s a bit more to it,” Woolsey said.

  
“He can he be more than dead?” John asked.

  
“Apparently, once we accepted his offer, he had his will changed. Ownership of the company goes to you—funds are frozen, but you’ll have other duties.”

  
“Sounds fun,” John said sardonically. Great. Paperwork. Lots of it.

  
“The good news is that it’s only temporary.”

  
“I think I’ll wait for the bad news to cheer up,” John said.

  
“The bad news is that you can’t give ownership to anyone else,” Woolsey said. “You’re only in charge until—the word used in the will was progeny—is found. It won’t be easy to find and it won’t be easy to transfer ownership.”

  
“What’s a progeny?” John asked. Great. Now he had to find Todd and something he didn’t even have a clue what it was.

  
“In this case, it means ‘children’” Woolsey said. “It doesn’t refer to human ones.”

  
“Can you start over, only this time speak English?” John asked.

  
“Jesse legally owned the company because Taiji couldn’t,” Woolsey said. “Taiji, however, had children. It can’t do anything with it legally even if it found a host.”  
John was quiet for a moment. He contemplated the best way to bury his face in his hand. He eventually settled on a mildly aggravated scowl instead. “When did we lose track of all these aliens?”

  
“Personally, I’m more worried about something else,” Woolsey said. “If one does find Taiji’s child, who would willingly be a host, as well as help aid Atlantis, not to mention all the other projects Jesse oversaw.”

  
“I miss Todd,” John said. “His schemes were always a lot more… um…”

  
“Predictable in retrospect?” Woolsey asked.

  
John shook his head. “Containable.” He had no idea where to find baby eel-snakes. It wasn’t like he could have the arm check every single fish tank in the world. Jesse was from South Korea and was visiting America. He had trade agreements with China and other countries. Where should he even begin to start looking? Who would take care of something like that? Could he just check a payroll for ‘Feed baby symbiote?’ Maybe it already had a host. If so, how did Jesse keep track of them? A human was easier to hide, but harder to find.

  
He sighed. “I’m going to concentrate on one alien at a time,” John said. “Todd’s being difficult enough, even if it isn’t his fault.”

  
“SGC said they want SG-1 and other teams to handle that,” Woolsey said. “I thought you had heard about that.”

  
“So what do they expect me to do?” John complained.

  
“I assume the expect you to get well enough to yell at the IOA and then do that,” Woolsey said.

  
“What’d they do now?” John asked. When did he sign up to be a babysitter?

  
“Even if you found Taiji’s progeny and a host for them, there would be no legal way to transfer ownership. Along with retrofitting Atlantis, it was one of the major changes needed for the Peace Delegation. Jesse intended to return to the IOA and push for the law after he’d help rescue Todd; however, as the new owner of the company, the best person to convince them would be you.”

  
“Do I have to?” John asked.

  
“No, but if you don’t we’ll face several international problems, the stargate programs will probably lose a lot—if not all—funding, the funds of the company will be frozen indefinitely, and we will no longer be able to keep other countries from insisting on ‘helping’ to find Todd without cleaning up the mess they make.” Woolsey said, stopping to calmly take a breath. “That would be all about the company. We’d be facing even more problems about quitting on the Peace Delegation now.”  
“Did I mention how much I miss Todd messing with us?” John asked, sitting down. He should have done that a long time ago in this conversation. Jesse may have been moral to the point of being annoying, somehow creating an idealism that was almost nauseating, yet fit well into reality almost perfectly and willing to find ways to fill in the tiny gaps, but to dump something like this on him? Why him? What was the point? Why not find his own kids? Didn’t he keep an eye on them? Why hide them? Why hadn’t they spoken up now that the will had been passed around?

  
“Yes,” Woolsey said. “Jesse thought he could keep that from happening entirely; I never really tried to tell him I doubted it would work at all.”

  
“What do you mean?” John asked. Great. Even dead, Jesse was talking in riddles. If only there was a way to shut him up.

  
“Jesse thought that eventually the Peace Delegation could be used to negotiate with the wraith.,” Woolsey said. He obviously didn’t believe the plan would work and that it was stupider, at least compared to retrospect, than the previously plans that involved Jesse. “He thought he could talk to Todd…not exactly befriending him, but close to it; accommodating him enough to convince him not to try anything.”

  
“Might not be a bad idea,” John mused, thought not uncomfortable with the idea, yet not happy with it. It was, technically, his fault…maybe. If he hadn’t promised to shoot Todd, would he have even written to them for help? Why him? Surely Todd was smart enough to find at least one thing to get himself killed on his own. Suddenly John hoped Todd had been sniffing a lot of paint. The alternative was both uncomfortable and hard to define.

  
“What do you mean?” Woolsey asked. He always wondered what made people think differently as individuals. He never considered someone to have sniffed paint or suffer from depression; for some reason it was always new when those things turn out to be true.

  
“I almost had him,” John said, almost wistfully. “He didn’t want to come with me.”

  
“Then why did he write to us?” Woolsey asked.

  
“He wanted me to shoot him,” John said, slowly letting his depression at the situation show. “I think he wanted me to do it personally.”

  
“Why didn’t you?” he asked. Woolsey wasn’t good at reading people. He doubted people, to him bonds were invisible when others thought they were opaque, he never knew how to let his own feelings and past show and never learned how from others. However, it was obvious to him as to why John didn’t go through with it. It wasn’t a delay. It wasn’t lack of equipment. It wasn’t suspecting a trap. It wasn’t even the presence or Jesse. John didn’t want to. Woolsey didn’t want an answer, he wanted an explanation. He wasn’t good at people, but he figured John probably needed this. Even if John didn’t want it, he needed it. Probably.

  
“I thought I could figure something out,” John said. “I thought Jesse would say something.” So moral, so encouraging… he never expected Jesse to do the same thing for Todd. Not then, but later. Somehow, he had expected someone who had demanded the need for constant morality to stop, just once, so the could be even more moral later. Why didn’t that work? Why had Jesse just let Todd ask? They did he not fight to give Todd something he’d enjoy? Why did he have to agree wit Todd’s decision? Why did he think then was the time to start letting Todd live his own life? Morals sucked. How could anyone go through life living by them all the time? Why couldn’t he do that anymore?

  
“What did he think?”

  
“Todd was a lot more serious about it, so he didn’t try to fight him over it,” John said. “He said there was another option, but when Todd said he didn’t want to, he didn’t go into it. “So, what was it?”

  
“Why do you think I would know?” Woolsey asked.

  
“You spent over a week in the same room with him,” John said. Why did everyone think he was the expert on ever alien they met?

  
“We never really talked about that…or much of anything else,” Woolsey said, seeing John’s grin and preventing the question he knew John practically had to ask.  
“You need to get out more,” John said, chuckling.

  
“I don’t think I want to for a while, given what happened when I got close to it,” Woolsey said, not amused at what John was thinking.  
“Do you think it’s a good idea?” John asked.

  
Woolsey put his hand to his temples. “Please tell me you just asked me about Todd and that you’re not thinking what you’re probably thinking.”

  
“I don’t think about it that—“ John started to complain.

  
“Yes, you do,” Woolsey said, doing his best to get the point across with just that sentence.

  
“Fine,” John conceded. He didn’t think he did, but he was also smart enough not to argue over it… anymore. “I meant finding another option about what to do with Todd.”

  
“What other options could there be?” Woolsey asked.

  
“Dunno,” John said, suddenly reminded of the last time Todd had expected him to kill him. He hadn’t then, either. That time Todd had been appreciative for the surprise. Even though Todd had thought John was ultimately out to kill him, he healed him, giving back what he took in desperation. “But I think I want one.”

……….

John took advantage of his new duties the best way he could: making it up as he went. Having taken over Jesse’s duties, he decided to supervise the changes on Atlantis. It was what he thought Jesse would do—besides help Todd. He did his best to imitate how Jesse would keep an eye on things while never being in the way.  
He did help. He was glad he did. Just by being there, everyone focused on whatever it was they were supposed to be doing. Perhaps it was due to the awkwardness of someone just getting used to a prosthetic, even as the weeks went by. Perhaps it was feeling John was armed with two large metal sticks. Perhaps it was just knowing that he was around and that nothing had changed that much about him. He didn’t care. He was there with people and he was important.

  
Still, nothing felt completely normal for him. The crutches were annoying. He would get around fast, but he always found his gestures, even subtle ones, were impaired by them. He still needed them to balance, despite getting used to the prosthetic over time.

  
Worst of all was getting used to remembering it was plastic beneath his knee. Sometimes he swore he could feel his foot. Often it was just the sensation of the floor beneath him, sometimes he thought he could feel the muscles twist or bang against something, even in open areas. On occasion, he thought he should feel something, such as when he accidentally put his crutch on his foot. He was shocked there was no sensation, only to remember why his body had no response.

  
He hated when these things happened. He should be able to get on wit his life now. He didn’t’ need to visit Carson any more. He had moved back into his room weeks ago. He should be able to just get up, grab his crutches, and do whatever he wanted to do. He even wondered why he still had to use the crutches. He shouldn’t. He had a prosthetic; everything should be back to normal now.

  
Except everything shouldn’t be normal now. Things were too normal, going too smoothly. Why was everything so relaxed around the place when it had been a month since Todd disappeared for good? A loose wraith practically disappearing off a map was no time for things to be normal. There should be tension, worry, fear… he should be feeling those and helping direct those into something useful. Yet, every day when he woke up, he never thought about an alien that had disappeared into the hands of a group smart enough that no one knew who the were and dangerous enough to throw nerve gas around just to get what they wanted. He could go for days forgetting about someone who was determined to return everything of his to normal while expecting to be gunned down seconds afterwards. He hated himself for seldom remembering Todd still expected that.

  
He wished he could play golf. Everything was easier to think about when he played golf. Nothing felt as wrong as it did now when he played golf. Everything cold wait, everything fell into order in a queue in his mind. Everything was sorted and eventually became solvable when he could play golf.

  
He couldn’t though. He wasn’t allowed to do so according to environmental laws. He wasn’t even allowed to use the biodegradable kind. He couldn’t because he was on crutches. He still needed them to stand. It wasn’t fair. He’d had golf taken away from him. It was cruel. It was unfair.

  
He was going to make it fair. No one took these things away from him. Especially not golf.

…………

At the end of each month, John had sent a copy of the law Jesse had written up for the peace delegation to go into effect. John always included a letter that said, as eloquently as possible, to put it into effect or else and that he’d make sure they really didn’t like ‘else.’

  
For the first two months, he was ignored. Halfway through the third, he finally got a reply. It was an invitation to speak to them personally on Jesse’s behalf. Jesse spoke for his company and most of the Asian Nations involved in their own Stargate Programs, which they agreed to share, only because there was the possibility of monetary gain from each other. John was going to be speaking for the company he couldn’t run and needed to give to someone else, this time speaking for America, owner of not just the biggest Stargate program and the biggest budget, but also the country who still had a wraith hidden somewhere in it’s borders.

  
He wasn’t going to complain that no one had found Todd when he couldn’t find an alien himself. He wasn’t going to find that until he could hand the company over to it. He wasn’t going to get that done until it was possible. That wasn’t going to be possible until he had bugged the IOA enough that they were either too annoyed with him or felt that he was copying them by annoying others constantly the same way they had always done.

  
He wasn’t going to put up with babysitting anyone. Especially not someone who’d rather be shot than go to the trouble to be rescued. He was going to drag Todd by the ear and get things straightened out… not that he had any clue how to do that.

  
First things first, though.

  
As work was finished on Atlantis, he was surprised how much had changed while so little of it had been changed. It was all about returning the city to what it was meant to be: a city. It was going to hold refugees, diplomats, representatives, and anyone else who wanted to start or solve a problem, possibly both. It was going to be a place where people could eat, sleep, rest, and interact with those from other galaxies. Technically that was what it was before; just now it could be used for that all the time by people who weren’t part of the Atlantis Expedition. SGC was going to send people to be armed for them. Atlantis would be a gigantic pitstop of two galaxies, maybe three.

  
The work was almost finished now; he probably wasn’t needed to supervise, even if someone was having a really, really bad day. Most of what needed to be done was just wiring and adjusting things via control crystals.

  
“The worst that could happen is Rodney complains too much that Zelenka’s teling him what to do,” John said. Ever since work he had been noticeable, he had become accustomed to watching the lower promenade from the upper walkways. Ronon often joined him, thought the Satedan easily became bored doing nothing but standing and watching without planning to fight something. “I’m sure you can break that kind of fight up without breaking anything… of his.”

  
“What about after that?” Ronon asked.

  
“I think he’ll get back to work after that” John said.

  
“No, what will you do after you go to ‘South of Korea’ to talk to the IOA?” Ronon asked.

  
“I’m gonna try and figure out where Taiji put his kid,” John said. “Someone’s gotta want to be paid back for all the fish food by now.”

  
“That’s when Atlantis goes back into space?” Ronon said.

  
“Yup,” John said. “Think you can handle it? A peace delegation isn’t going to be like a military outpost. You’re going to be stopping most fights and you can’t beat someone up for information even if someone else wants you to.”

  
“Doesn’t sound like fun,” Ronon said grumpily.

  
“Oh, I’m sure someone will ask the delegation to beat someone up for them,” John said, smiling. “You’ll have tons of stories for me.”

  
“What’s that mean?” Ronon asked, suddenly concerned. He rarely did this outside of someone dying. John not fighting with him was close enough.

  
“It means I can’t fight like this,” John said. “I’m hoping you can pick up the slack while I’m gone.”

  
“You’ve got a new leg,” Ronon thought. This was one of those miracles Earth had at it’s disposal. It was like fried food and television and antibiotics. It was better than anything else and it solved problems instantly. Earth was cool like that.

  
“Yeah, but I still gotta get used to it more before I can fight on it,” John said. “I’ll be back.”

  
“You better,” Ronon said.

  
“What are you going to do if I don’t?” John asked, chuckling. “Go to Earth and drag me back?”

  
“Who says I can’t?” Ronon asked.

  
“Whoever ends up in charge,” John said. “And Woolsey. He’ll still be in charge.”

  
“Who says I’ll listen to either of them?” Ronon asked. “You’re coming back or else.”

  
“Just do me a favor and make sure everyone else knows about all this, okay?” John asked. “The more people who know, the sooner I’ll have to get back before you all start trouble.”

……………..

It was two days before John had to leave for South Korea, Jesse’s territory. This was one of those things he wished Jesse had been around to do on his own. Then again, if Jesse were around, no one would need to do this so badly.

  
He hoped his ‘or else’ strategy worked. If they didn’t fear ‘else’ he hoped he could direct all complaints about why there was no peace delegation headquarters as promised to point the blame at them. He hoped the wouldn’t be ready to just redirect it at him. He hoped Jesse had had enough experience to write down exactly what was needed in a way to convince them. He’d never been the world’s best diplomat and considering how messed up he was glad he considered himself lucky he hadn’t ruined most of a solar system himself.

  
If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right. If he could go to Atlantis before there was an hope of reaching Earth and pack everything right, it’d be downright embarrassing if he forgot something just going across the Pacific. At least these days he never had to worry about finding a matching sock.

  
A knock at his door interrupted his mental checklist as he contemplated his luggage. “Come in,” he said. He wasn’t so pressed for time that it couldn’t wait. He didn’t turn around as Teyla entered his room. “What’s up?”

  
“I heard you were leaving us,” Teyla said solemnly.

  
“Yup,” John said. “My plane leaves tomorrow.”

  
“John, Atlantis needs you here,” Teyla said.

  
“Actually, it needs me over there for a bit,” John said. “That way we won’t get in trouble and someone else can actually handle things. Otherwise, we can’t get back into space.”

  
“We’ll need you there,” Teyla said, placing her hand on his shoulder. “You don’t need to fight; we need you there as a leader.”

  
“That’s not really a job,” John said, chuckling. “I can’t get pain doing that.”

  
“You could still stay here,” Teyla said. “The headquarters would be accepting people from all over the galaxy who need a place to stay.”

  
“It still wouldn’t work, Teyla,” John said. “I could do that because I could fight. If I can’t get in the middle of things and cause trouble I won’t know the best way to get people out of it.”

  
“You can’t do that now?” Teyla asked.

  
“It wouldn’t be the same,” John said.

  
“You would still be there for all of us,” Teyla said. “Atlantis would be where it belongs. We’d be protecting people again.”

  
“I wouldn’t be making the same kid of decisions,” John said. “No one trusts me jest because I showed ‘em popcorn and beer. They better not, at least.”

  
“We don’t,” Teyla said. “There will be those when Atlantis goes back, won’t there?”

  
“Better ask Woolsey,” John said. “You sure everyone wants me around as a leader?”

  
“Of course we do,” Teyla said.

  
“You asked everyone?” John asked, impressed.

  
“I don’t need to.”

  
As much as this cheered John up, it was also depressing. He had been so prepared just to walk away and come back in a year or two and pick up where he left off. He knew people would miss him, but he didn’t think people would need him. Not him specifically. If he was going to leave Atlantis, he had to leave Atlantis where it was, he couldn’t be taking it with him.

………

Nearly everyone had left Atlantis by now. They had a chance to revisit Earth and there would be no emergency to call them back. It was not a choice, as they were told to leave. They weren’t just no longer needed, but they weren’t wanted around until the problem with funding the city was solved.

  
Woolsey had stayed to watch the place, as there were still people working with in the city, throw they numbered barely over a dozen. Rodney had stayed, along with a few engineers, to keep the place running smoothly. The last thing the needed now was any of the millions of reasons the cloak could fail. Dr. Keeler had stayed with him, telling everyone the place still needed a doctor around and that even sitting around with nothing to do, everyone present could still find a way to injure themselves. Lastly, Ronon and Teyla stayed on the island-city. There was no where for them to go, save for being offered rides to and from nearby California tourist attractions.

  
“You know, you could have just left a fruit basket,” John said, to the group.

  
“We decided this was far more fitting,” Teyla said, bowing. “I was not about to miss this farewell. Will you be returning here after our trip?”

  
“Sorry, SGC wanted me to meet them in Cheyenne after this to discuss Todd in case they ever figure out where he is,” John said, chuckling at the drama. “Come on. I’ll be back. This isn’t a wake.”

  
“I’m just here to make sure you’re coming back,” Ronon said. “It’s still that or else.”

  
“Yeah, I don’t really want to experience ‘else.’” John said. “Don’t get into any trouble I wouldn’t.”

  
“Things will certainly be different without you,” Woolsey said. He wasn’t good at goodbyes. Or hellos. Or much of anything of that kind. It was one of the reasons he liked dogs. He didn’t have to try with them and the knew what he felt. “As many insane things as you’ve done, I doubt my job will be any easier without you.”  
“I really thought you’d be the one to leave a fruitbasket,” John said. “I’ll miss you too, though.”

  
“Atlantis has introduced me to a good man people I’d rather see them depart in person,” Woolsey said.

  
“Don’t let it go to your head,” John said.

  
“Ow,” Rodney suddenly yelped as Jennifer stabbed him with her elbow. “Umm… I… here,” he said, shoving a coloredbox at John. “I actually bothered to get you something. Plane rides can be pretty boring, you know.”

  
“What’s Elfquest?” John asked as he opened the box, finding several comics in it.

  
“I have no idea,” Rodney said, pointing at Jennifer. “She picked it out.”

  
“I wanted to tell everyone you won’t be needing the crutches in a few months,” Jennifer said. “You’ll be back in the Air Force in about a year from now. I convinced SGC that if they find Todd, you should be the one to talk to him afterward for you.”

  
“That’s a pretty good idea,” John said. If they were throwing nerve gas around, they couldn’t be pleasant enough that five new people screaming at Todd would be something he could handle easily. “I’ll try to bring back someone fun. You guys are depressing. Stop worrying and let me got to my boat”

  
As he made his way to the pier and the awaiting boat, he realized exactly what it was that would be a good place to put Todd after this. Sure it wouldn’t be the same as for him, but it was safe and far away from Earth. It was perfect for John and though it wouldn’t be perfect for Todd, it’d be close enough.


	8. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot--8

There wasn’t much to SG-1 these days. Teal’c had returned to his people. Samantha now commanded a starship. All that was left was Cameron and two civilians, one not even native to Earth. They weren’t much of a replacement when it came to finding captured wraith. Daniel had considered this a good opportunity to learn about wraith, until he discovered how little there was, even combining mission reports form Atlantis and the archives the Ancients left behind. Cameron and Vala wondered if any of his dead-ends, cul-de-sacs, and other general frustrations would lead to them doing anything. By now even Daniel had given up. Even General Landry had forgotten about Todd.

  
Only Dr. Lee, who had asked for the meeting in the first place, had believed this wasn’t a fruitless endeavor.

  
“The good news is, Todd’s has no clue how a stargate works when it comes to building them—what?”

  
“We were expecting something a bit more… ‘apocalypsey’ when we found him.” Vala said. To them, this was akin to looking up a supervillain in the phone book and politely asking them to stop.

  
“You want to wait and see what happens?” Dr. Lee asked. And here he thought they were supposed to prevent the apocalypse, just as they had the last dozen times.  
“Just tell us how you found him and where he is,” Cameron said. He didn’t want to be at the table for another month.

  
“Well, I was on this math forum and someone recently asked for help on a formula, which turned out to be a partial formula for stargate travel—with a bunch of errors. I asked him about where he came up with it, and he said it was something his company decided was gibberish and couldn’t take a research grant.”

  
“You think he’s working with Todd?” Daniel asked. The doctor needed to get out more and when he recommended that, it was serious.

  
“No, the company that gave it to him was VETA industries. He was allowed to post it on the forum because it wasn’t part of his job any longer,” Dr. Lee said.

  
“Can we make this long story short?” Landry asked.

  
“They don’t exist,” Dr. Lee summed up.

  
Cameron asked.

  
“It’s a false-front subsidiary,” Dr. Lee said, assuming that explained everything.

  
According to everyone’s faces, it didn’t.

  
“It’s a false-front subsidiary company...”

  
Not even the resident language expert had a clue what he was talking about.

  
“It’s a corporation created purely to take responsibility for risky business deals so the creators can dissolve it at the first sign of trouble to keep real people from taking the blame and having to pay up if they can help it. If it works, the money and patents just go to the parent company and they dissolve it anyway.”

  
“If it’s that simple, just say that,” Vala said, amused.

  
“Don’t get ideas,” Daniel said flatly.

  
“What kind of ‘risky business deals?’ are we talking?” Landry asked.

  
“I couldn’t find that out; they’re top secret,” Dr. Lee said. “I did find out that they work for DARPA, who break more rules a week than Jack did over the first eight years.”

  
“Oh boy,” Cameron said as Daniel put his hand to his temples. Landry wasn’t pleased either.

  
“What?” Vala asked, suddenly as clueless as Dr. Lee.

  
“Before we go against DARPA, what makes you think they have our alien?” Landry asked. Note to self: Just ask for a memo next time Dr. Lee discovered something.  
“I did find out that most of their projects are coming from a single medical research building in La Jolla, California,” Dr. Lee said. “That company contracts out to dozens of things, including the army and air force, so I managed to get a bit of information about them in general. The facility of theirs that specialises in nanoscience is in a totally different state—which is why it’s odd that one of their lead developers has a California phone number and no tax information. They won’t tell me what VETA industries is a subsidiary of, though.”

  
“That’s it?” Vala asked. “I don’t see any evidence of aliens that eat humans in this.”

  
“Computers and nanoscience were his areas of expertise,” Daniel admitted. “One mystery group is more than enough, too.”

  
“Yeah, but they work for DARPA; we can just wait this out,” Cameron said. “Whatever they’re cooking up, we’re gonna get.”

  
“Not all the contracts are to DARPA,” Dr. Lee said. “They admitted that some of their current contracts were outside foreign investors looking for patents. Plus whoever has him said they were going to auction him off; this is probably just them milking him for all he’s worth before they finally sell him. It’s not like DARPA owns the facility; they’re a third contractor.”

  
“That still doesn’t give us a plan,” Landry said.

  
“Somehow I thought Daniel would have cracked a Carmen Sandiego plot,” Cameron said. “What exactly would our plan be? We’re still just attacking a civilian office in front of tons of people.”

  
“At least we know not to be as dumb as the last people who tried,” Vala said.

  
“Doesn’t narrow down our options of what we should do,” Cameron said.

  
“Especially when we need to follow Jesse’s advice,” Daniel said.

  
“How so?” Vala asked.

  
“Thanks to the last time humans were in Atlantis, we’ve got a lot to make up for if we want to show we’re the best to mediate an intergalactic argument and try to get everyone to be friends,” Cameron said.

  
“So?” Taking to long to explain things must be contagious around here.

  
“So we have to be on our best behaviour,” Cameron said. Whatever her idea was, he didn’t want to know, let alone clean up after it. “You of all people should know what it means.”

  
“Oh blababla, do the right thing, I know all that,” Vala said waving her hand at him. “I still don’t see any problem. A woman like Jesse—“

  
“Man,” Daniel corrected. He was far too used to being the only person who understood how amorphous gender roles were for humans.

  
“Exactly,” Vala said, not missing a beat. “Someone like that wouldn’t be telling us not to break a rule or two, just to make sure which kind of pants we’re wearing when we do.”

  
“That’s a strangely fitting metaphor,” Daniel said.

  
“We’re already wearing pants; what’s the next step?” Cameron asked. “These guys have made it pretty clear they’re serious about keeping Todd where they want him.”

  
“You sure you can’t just threaten them?” Dr. Lee asked.

  
“Terrorism tends to make a bad track record,” Cameron said. “These guys have made it pretty clear they want Todd to stay where they want him. We don’t even know who they are and they’re willing to risk civilian lives and blame us.”

  
“Why don’t we just do something similar?” Vala asked. “Without the ‘injuring civilians’ stuff?”

  
“You mean a bomb scare?” Dr. Lee asked.

  
“How would we get a bomb in there without it being noticed?” Vala asked. “Won’t that still hurt people?”

  
“You wouldn’t have to have a real bomb,” Dr. Lee said. “You could tell them you suspect someone may have put a bomb in the building. Everyone would have to evacuate the area. You could go in before the bomb squad—what?”

  
Again, everyone wondered when Dr. Lee had somehow done so much without their knowledge of it. When did he get three steps ahead of SG-1?  
“When did you start coming up with plans?”

  
“I came up with a plan?” Dr. Lee asked. “Cool”

  
“Then what?” Daniel asked. “What exactly do we do with a wraith? Put it in a closet and wait for John?”

  
“Closets are too flimsy,” Cameron retorted. “We can dump it in the isolation room left over from Reese. The security camera in there still works, right?”

  
“He’s over ten thousand years old and we’re going to leave him in a room full of picture books and pens?” Daniel asked? He hoped no aliens ever rescued him with this line of thinking.

  
“John already called babysitting him.” Cameron said, rolling his eyes. Why couldn’t Daniel wait until they had the alien before complaining about how they treated it? “If he says something, we’ll give it an Xbox or something.”

………………

“Hello?” John answered his phone. The second he turned it on after a long, dull—though thankfully successful—meeting, it had started to ring. Most of the meeting as wasting his time and whining in a very political way until the IOA members gave up in boredom, as if they never found the subject interesting in the first place. The rest was waiting and listening to speeches and hearing different parts of the law Jesse had written up, along with a lot of skewed history of SG- and his own team.

  
“What in the world have you been teaching these aliens?” someone screamed at him. This was not what he had been expecting from and SG-1 number.

  
“Huh?” John answered. It summed things up very precisely.

  
“Your stupid wraith threw a fire axe at me!”

  
“Took you long enough,” John said. “Who is this?”

…………………..

Todd slowly sat up. He hasn’t been in any condition to fl to his feet as his instincts told him to for a while. He slowly looked around, taking his surroundings. Very little had changed.

  
He found himself sitting in a small pink blanket with disgusting pictures all over it. There were several boxes of coloured writing utensils arranged neatly on top of a pile of paper next to him. Next to that was a pile of books, the writing on them in unnecessarily large letters and the pictures in garish colours. He didn’t want to know what they said. This was all too familiar. He turned around as best he could; yes, there was a camera watching him.  
At least he was trapped in a larger room this time.

  
Just like before, he was allowed little time to contemplate his prison; as John entered the room. Both were surprised about the reunion, including the human who had known for hours this would happen. Often there was no planning for the inevitable.

  
John had been allowed to use the beaming station to travel as close as he could the Cheyenne base and was driven the rest of the way. He had been very thankful for an elevator in the compound.

  
All his thanks diminished as he entered the room. Staring at Todd, he was too overwhelmed by the sight in front of him to even notice the doors closing behind him. He wished he were still on the stairs, struggling against awkwardness and the probability of crashing all the way down. He wished there were more stairs to struggle on. He wished he had spent more time arguing with Cameron. He wished he had bothered to take a plane. He wished he had a valid excuse not to be here and not to have to handle this situation. What does one say to someone who gave up on them before ever expecting your planet to backstab your and torture you both?

  
John sighed. Todd had been described as having been found ‘kinda injured’. The problem with tact was that it never prepared you for what it meant to say. The fact that Todd’s face hadn’t improved was the most minor of the ways someone had fond to be creative with how….durable Todd’s species turned out to be. He had most of his tangled hair, which looked worse now—the sting was in the word ‘most.’ Even across the room, John could see tiny patches on the sides and back that had been shaved, messy fuzz blending in with the rest. Looking at the rest of him, he wasn’t ready to hear what had been done in those places.

  
Cameron had also mentioned Dr. Lam did as much as she could to ‘fix him up’ without freaking out that he’d wake up. She hadn’t done much but make him look worse than if she’d left him alone. John wondered if she’d actually helped anything. Beside the small bandages on his face, she had wrapped him lower left leg in a SAM splint.

  
For the most part, Todd was ignoring the injuries; his attention was primarily on John. His left hand was on his arm, making it obvious that the second he felt he had privacy, he was going to curl in on the injury and beg whatever he believed in to make the pain stop. He wasn’t just trying to hide the pain. He was doing his best, but here and now—without the grainy vague camera—it was far too obvious what had happened: There was nothing there anymore; his arm stopped three inches from where his wrist had been.

  
John wanted to be sick. He wanted to cringe. He wanted to leave. He wanted never to have set foot here in the first place. He wanted to know what to say. All he could do was be thankful Todd didn’t take insult to the childish toys and that those who last had him in custody had gotten rid of the hideous rainbow shirt and duct tape. They had bothered to give him an outfit similar to what the stargate programs gave patients, but that was the end of their generosity. They hadn’t even done anything about the paint.

  
“So… hi.” He wanted to slap himself. He needed to be here. He needed to do this. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t. And yet, that was the best he could come up with.

  
“Where is this?” Todd asked, pulling his right arm farther away and still trying to hide what had happened with his hand.

  
“It’s not Area 51, if that’s what you’re concerned about,” John said. “And it’s not… wherever you were last. You’re in a completely different state now.”

  
Todd didn’t understand. Or, rather, he understood, just not in the way John had meant. Of course, he was in a different state. He’d gone form the state of despair to the state of confusion.

  
“That is… no longer comforting,” Todd said, making an attempt to seem calm as he reached back and hold the back of his neck. He failed utterly in hiding his fear, his resulting movements jerky and far less subtle than he’d hoped to be.

  
“What?” John asked, noticing Todd was staring cautiously at his crutches. He looked like he wanted to find a substitute to running away. Todd was already injured, confused, and very definitely hungry; John didn’t need to add panicking to the list of potentially fatal inconveniences.

  
It was unclear whether Todd ignored him or if his small phrase was what prompted Todd to suddenly turn to the security camera and tighten his grip on his neck. Todd did nothing after that, waiting for something unpleasant as the silence and stillness took over the room.

  
“What are you doing?” John asked. Three months on Earth and Todd was acting positively batty. Humans had done something in a few dozen weeks that the genii couldn’t manage in years. This was not an accomplishment he wanted on record.

  
“This is nothing but more coercion,” Todd said. “Why do you feel it is necessary? What is it you want me to do?”

  
“I’m pretty sure you’re confused,” John said. So was he. He had expected ‘Hi, didn’t kill anyone you shouldn’t have, right? No? Let’s get back to space, then.’ It was as if whoever had gotten their hands on him intentionally made it difficult for anyone to help him if they ever lost their grip.

  
“Do not bother with your invisible and insignificant details,” Todd said, almost growling in his anger. “There is no real difference in my situation. This is just another box to be trapped in, just another set of demands for information I have; just because there will be no voice as you watch me, I know what you can do to force my hand and I know you can do far worse. Don’t bother playing with me; it won’t earn you anything. What is it you wanted from me?”

  
Why was it that Todd kept making him feel guilty just for showing up and saying ‘hi’? “Well, since we’re on the subject, Dr. Lam is concerned about your leg. She knows it’s broken, but she can’t do much unless we get X-rays and it’d be a lot easier if—“

  
“I have had quite enough of doctors,” Todd said. He rubbed his neck, giving as many details as needed to show John it was not a subject either of them would like to delve into. “I will not visit her willingly; save yourself the time. Hadn’t you learned that?”

  
John wanted to ask what he was talking about, but before he could open his mouth, it hit square in the gut what Todd meant. There was no explanation, no making amends for this. To him, this was the work of the Tau’ri. No humans had ever given him reason for him to distinguish themselves from each other beyond such categories and he wasn’t going to see a difference now. After all: all wraith were wraith. All humans from Earth felt the same about each and every one of them: when it came down to it, shoot them.

  
This was what Jesse was trying to stop. This was something he not only had foreseen, but had known firsthand thanks to Taiji. Only know did John realize how much skill it took to be that kind of person, to always think of not only the repercussions of every step you took, but that of all who represented humanity. Even someone you never met could make you forget and one day you know exactly who they are as a human and it’s your own soul find missing when you wake up.  
John felt sick. At least with the wraith there was something to understand. Humans… humans didn’t need reasons. They didn’t even need excuses. They just did… whatever.

  
“Why don’t you try and take it easy for a while?” John asked. “Anything I can actually get for you? We’ve got an Xbox.”

  
“I have had enough of boxes,” Todd said, nodding to the room in general.

  
“Right,” John said. Great, now he’d have to watch out for simple geometry.

  
“There cannot possibly be this much concern for someone you had so recently would get himself killed so you wouldn’t have to bother with the task yourself,” Todd said, cocking his head and finally letting his arm fall from protecting his neck. “There is something… intrinsically wrong with you.”

  
“False leg,” John said causally. He was so used to being casual about it. He no longer had any idea if he wanted to talk about it in detail, or how. All he knew was that Todd wasn’t someone he wasn’t to be so open with, no matter how it went. “I lost my right leg under the knee the last time I went looking for you. You’re welcome by the way.”

  
Todd considered the words for a few seconds. He didn’t seem chevalier about what had happened to John, but he gave no thanks either. Perhaps he didn’t feel the need; perhaps there was no part of the wraith language or culture for it; perhaps the last time they’d met had given him to feel thanks for the intention. “Is that the reason you no longer ask me your favourite question?”

  
John shrugged to himself. There was no point in postponing the question now. Todd seemed to hint that the familiarity might even take the edge off the situation for him. “You mean to tell me that after all…of…whatever happened, you’re still trying to gloat over hiding something?”

  
“It is always the only thing you truly want from me,” Todd answered. His voice lacked his usual pride in keeping what he had hidden. There was honesty in that there was something indeed hidden, merely that there was no bargaining to be made for its reveal.

  
“Are you sure it’s the only thing?” John asked.

  
Todd didn’t see a reason to dignify the question with a response other than to narrow his eyes. He’d been through far too much for such pathetic humor.  
“Anything in particular you’re hinting at?” John asked. “Anything that’s going to kill everyone soon?”

  
“You truly do not know of anything before your people left me here?” Todd asked in genuine surprise.

  
“I was in Korea,” John said. “All I heard was that you threw an axe at someone. After that the building kinda… exploded.” It was a gas leak, but it was still far too suspicious to be considered a coincidence. Unfortunately, it was also too obscure to ask Todd about.

  
Todd waited for the other shoe to drop on John’s head.

  
“Where’d you get an axe?” John asked. “How did you reach it—wait—“

  
“If I told you what I knew of who obviously helped me, it would put their life at risk, wouldn’t it?”

  
“I guess it would,” John said. Even when there was a reason for him to hide things, even to speak in riddles, it wasn’t comforting. It didn’t even help that he had a good reason. “Did they ask you to tell them how to make a stargate?”

  
“They asked me many things,” Todd said. “I do not know who they were; I never saw them. It was always a voice over an intercom, never a person. That question was… quite painful as I had no adequate answer for them.”

  
“Is that why you were holding your neck?”

  
“You mean that you do not have it?”

  
“Have what?” John asked. “I just came back to Cheyenne; all I was told was to talk to you and see if Dr. Lam could look at your leg.”

  
“That is an advantageous absence, currently,” Todd said, smiling a humourless grin. He’d been beaten for months, had been forced to crawl his way to escape and use an axe to grab hold of stairway railing until he felt force to use it as a weapon, been forced to cover half his face, and lost part of his vision and yet he still had the pride to gloat at his both his former and current captors.

  
John shook his head. You can’t keep a good dog down, apparently. “You have no idea where you are, do you? Geographically speaking, I mean.” John crossed his arms while still leaning on the crutches. Something else was up. Todd was trying to hide something more than a missing cattle prod or protect a person who had helped him escape.

  
“I know I am no longer in ‘San Francisco,” Todd answered immediately and innocently.

  
“Why weren’t you confused when I mentioned Cheyenne or Korea?” Heck, why didn’t’ he ask which Korea if he knew what Korea was in the first place?

  
“The voice that speaks to me in my head told me about them.”


	9. Chapter 9

“We have three days to get Atlantis back into space. If we back out, we’re going to face too much international backlash to handle. We need to set a moral example to be respected as peacekeepers in the city and in the meantime we’ve got a wraith with mental problems thanks to humans—something not even the ancients managed to do,” Landry said. “Have I missed anything?”

  
“I’m still wondering how things got so complicated without any of it being Todd’s fault,” John muttered.

  
“We’re also short one snake that’s supposed to help fund this,” Cameron said.

  
“Woolsey said he’d work on that,” Landry said. “He’ll be here tomorrow to see if he can help find a loophole or a way to stall.”

  
“You need to find better friends,” Cameron said to John.

  
“Todd hasn’t done anything helpful, has he?” Landry asked.

  
“No, he just decided to complicate things,” John said, placing one of the picture books Todd has been given and a few pieces of paper on the table. “I talked to him again, but he still won’t give me names, says he has no idea where he was, and he’s not going to get better without food. The good news is he doesn’t seem to be up to something…yet.”

  
“That’s good news?” Vala asked.

  
“What’s the bad news?” Cameron asked.

  
“He’s been acting weird and says he doesn’t remember it,” John said.

  
“As much as I don’t like the idea of one of those sitting there and thinking all day, ‘weird’ doesn’t narrow things down.”

  
“He’s been scribbling in the picture books and on paper,” John said.

  
“So he’s not just insane, he’s four,” Vala said. “At least he’s not drawing on the walls.”

  
“What was he writing?” Daniel asked.

  
“Looks like fortune cookie stuff,” John said, shoving the stuff towards Daniel. “He can’t read English, let alone Japanese.”

  
“This is Chinese,” Daniel said. “Was he reading these when he wasn’t writing in them?”

  
“Yeah, he was looking at them when I came in,” John said.

  
“He likes cats?” Vala asked, leaning over to see the book. “What are those scribbles?”

  
“He translated the sentences into Chinese and wraith.”

  
“Oh,” Vala said, as if it all made sense. She hoped Daniel would say something so it did. He didn’t. “So, is this a good thing?”

  
“Well, he’s not nuts,” Daniel said.

  
“He’s picking up CB radio transmissions in his head?” John asked.

  
“Why would truckers tell him where Korea is?” Cameron asked.

  
“I notice you have yet to say that this is indeed a good thing,” Landry said.

  
“Well, it’s more complicated than before.”

  
“How much more?” Cameron asked.

  
“How much is Todd’s fault?” John asked. “What? He usually is when things are this bad.”

  
“Well, we don’t have to look for Taiji’s kid anymore,” Daniel said, flipping through the book.

  
“You’re saying he’s had it all this time?” Vala asked.

  
“I think I liked it better when it was insane,” Cameron said.

  
“Exactly what part of this plan made sense to Jesse?” John asked.

  
“So who’s going to be the new host, then?” Vala asked. “We can’t let him do oversight, you said wraith don’t even know about money.”

  
John put his face in his hands. The thought of Todd having anything to do with regulating Atlantis made his brain hurt.

  
“I don’t think Taiji meant for it to stay with Todd,” Daniel said. “I think he’s been teaching himself how to read.”

  
“You mean the ‘snake’ has,” Cameron corrected.

  
“Well, yes. Todd hasn’t much of a clue what it’s been doing unless t talks to him,” Daniel conceded. “But it’s obviously leaving something for Todd when it’s not there. I think it’s getting ready for a new host now that we’ve found Todd.”

  
“Why exactly do we trust this thing?” Vala asked, pointing out why things were indeed more complicated and that it wouldn’t be over once they found a host. There weren’t easy answers to this, even if it looked lie it at first.

  
“Because otherwise it’s up to Woolsey to save our butts,” Cameron said.

  
“More than once,” John said. “Jesse was supposed to constantly fund us.”

  
“We would still have a wraith in our isolation room,” Landry reminded them.

  
“Jesse knew how to feed him without getting killed,” John said. “Wouldn’t this one know what to do as well?”

  
“Would the host want to?” Vala asked. “It’s still a baby Goa’uld; it can’t do much but talk, right?”

  
“It’s not a Goa’uld,” Daniel said.

  
“It’s still a snake, though,” Cameron said.

  
“So are the Tok’ra,” Daniel commented.

  
“This isn’t a Tok’ra, though,” Vala said.

  
“That’s what makes this complicated,” Daniel said. “Once we get it out of Todd, do we still trust it? It’s going to blend with its host sooner or later.”

  
“All the better to get it out of Todd,” John said. “I think I know of a way to get him to cooperate without making us look bad—if he’s not up to something.”

…………

Todd didn’t look up when John entered the room again. He’d come back, ask fro something, and walk away. That was how humans were. He missed john coming in just to insult him as if he were up to something criminal that he wouldn’t do himself. He never took anything then, never asked for anything.

  
“What did you write in this book?” John asked, holding a page open in front of Todd and hoping the wraith would look up.

  
“Why?” Todd asked, still looking down and covering whatever held his interest with his good arm.

  
“Just tell me if you can read this without the voice in your head helping you,” John said.

  
Too took his time studying the words—English, wraith, and Chinese. Each had their own grammar, their own words. Still… “Yes.”

  
“We need to get that voice out of your head, but to do that, we need to know what it wants,” John said, letting go of the book. Bending down with the crutches was problematic. He didn’t need anything embarrassing happening to him in front of Todd. John really hoped the thing wanted to leave. He didn’t want to be in the same solar system if it didn’t.

  
“What use would I be to you if I gave it up?” Todd asked, going back to whatever had previously had his attention.

  
John sighed. At least things were a lot more familiar now. “Well, it would depend on whether the thing talking to you still likes you once its out. I’m pretty sure it would know what to do with you, or it’ll figure out something fast.” And hopefully not kill itself again.

  
Todd tilted his head and stared off into the distance as if conversing seriously with something. He stayed that way for several minutes.

  
“Uh… hello?” John asked, waving a hand in front of Todd’s face. Nothing happened. “Okay…” John wanted to yell at Todd not to do things like that, but how do you tell a green, browless, life-sucking alien not to be weird?

  
Suddenly Todd smirked.

  
“You had better not be playing around,” John said. He was, wasn’t he?

  
“It knows why it needs to leave,” Todd said. He may have been smirking, but there wasn’t even a spiteful amusement to his words. He was waiting to finish in order to gloat at his words. Trapped, injured, confused, and badgered, yet he had something to make him laugh at the others who watched him and could go where they pleased. Apparently genetic memory included a sense of humor and the two had spent a while telling jokes to each other. “It also knows everything that happened to me. Some of your kind lack any knowledge of sedation for a wraith… they were quite skilled at compensating, though. Who have you chosen to remember such things and leave me here to be forgotten by everyone else?”

  
“I…” John said. He couldn’t tell if Todd’s stare was genuine curiosity or if he was hiding his enjoyment at situational schadenfreude behind his hair. Daniel had said the creature was too young and hadn’t been with Todd long enough for personalities to blend, but that wasn’t comforting anymore. Great, whoever was going to be in charge of funding and oversight was going to have Todd in their head no matter what. He was suddenly very glad he wasn’t going. “We don’t really have anyone planned.”

  
Todd blinked.

  
“What?” John asked angrily.

  
“You are not one to make bargains, Sheppard,” Todd said. “Are you asking for someone, no matter their price?”

  
“How much trouble are they going to cause?”

  
“What happened to the last person who heard this voice?”

  
That was certainly a lot of trouble. But if they kept themselves alive, it was definitely the kind of person Atlantis needed, especially if they could handle the boring financial stuff as well.

  
“How much about what’s going on do you know?”

  
“I have not been told much. It wants someone. Beyond that, it is vague.”

  
Great. John was at the wrong end of playing an intergalactic game of telephone and Todd was calling the other end ‘vague.’ “Fine, what do we do?”

  
Todd moved his arm and leant back, revealing what he’d been staring at. It was a piece of paper he’d scribbled on in Chinese.

  
“If I do this for you, you better not try anything sneaky or I am personally going to make sure you stay in Area 51. Understand?”

  
“What exactly would I do?” Todd asked.

  
John had not idea whether Todd was teasing or pointing out how immobilised he was, but he didn’t want to take chances. “Because you are way too smart not to without a warning.”

…...

“If he was hiding it, why did he hand it over?” Daniel asked. Daniel had wanted to watch Todd on the monitor out of curiosity, and everyone else took this as an opportunity not to do so.

  
“I don’t think it trusted us and Todd wasn’t’ going to help,” John said. “So, what is it?”

  
“An address to a college dorm,” Daniel said, keeping an eye on the monitor, despite the fact that Todd had been reading for the last twenty minutes.

  
“And?” John asked.

  
“There is no ‘and’,” Daniel said. “That’s it.”

  
“You sure it’s a college dorm?” John asked. “It sounds very… not at all what we need.”

  
“Well, it’s probably too early for personalities to blend,” Daniel said. “And I don’t think it matches either’s sense of humour to be a joke. Maybe they just know something or at holding onto something.”

  
“Whoever it is better not waste our time,” John said. “I already need to be here to discuss things with Woolsey in case I’m needed to transfer power of the company to someone. Do me a favour and make sure whoever goes after this person brings back a human. We have way too many aliens to deal with at the moment.”

…...

Daniel was chosen to keep an eye on things and make sure that diplomacy was used. The last thing they needed was someone too angry to help move an alien. Cameron was chosen to keep an eye and make sure things went quickly. The last thing they needed was someone still listening to an explanation to move an alien.  
“So who do you think the guy is, exactly?” Cameron asked Daniel as he knocked on the door of the dorm. “A secretary or more like a roommate?”

  
“I’m guessing someone very close,” Daniel said. “So far it’s been worried about trusting us and Todd’s personality couldn’t have affected it that much. It’s probably trying to protect someone with the knowledge of aliens; wouldn’t you?”

  
“Can I help you?” the owner of the room asked as the door opened. Her overly ambitious behead was the only thing that put her height over five feet. She sported a large shirt that said ‘Want to see how extreme m wormhole is?’

  
“I’m confused,” Cameron said. At least her ethnic features looked like she could be related to Jesse.

  
“I don’t’ think I can help you with that,” she said.

  
“You’re Mr. Diplomacy; say something,” Cameron said, elbowing Daniel.

  
“We’re looking for Andy Hunter. Is he in there?” Daniel asked.

  
“I’m Andy Hunter,” she said. “I didn’t know the army made house calls.”

  
“This place is crazy,” Cameron mused. Damn co-ed dorms.

  
“Welcome to San Francisco,” she said. Her words were neither biting, nor smug. To her, it was a formality. ‘Welcome to San Francisco, cookies are on the table. Something else weird will be with you shortly…’ “I’m not interested in enlisting, so can I get back to sleep?”

  
“It’s almost noon,” Daniel said.

  
“Welcome to college,” she replied. “Is this about Taiji?”

  
“Pretty much,” Cameron answered. It was a mistake.

  
Andy slammed the door closed.

  
Daniel put his hand to his face. “Would you stop trying to be diplomatic?”

  
“Sure, I’ll just tell her we need to throw her in a room where she can be killed and no one will ever know because it’s a secret purely because the person in charge of our budget turned into burnt paste.”

  
The door opened again. This time Andy held a large taped-up box. “Here you go,” she said, handing it to Daniel. “By the way, I can hear you through the door.”  
“What’s this?” Daniel asked as this time it was Cameron’s turn to put his face in his hand. This was going to be a long day… longer than it should. He should have gotten used to days like this long ago, but he still wasn’t.

  
“It’s whatever’s been willed to the beneficiary,” Andy said. “I’ve just been holding onto it. It is going to them, right? You’re not confiscating this?”

  
“Long story short, this isn’t what we came here for,” Daniel said.

  
“Thanks, though, but I think it’s your box now,” Cameron said, letting his hand drop.

  
“This is going to be weird even for San Francisco, isn’t it?” Andy asked. Even she knew it was going to be one of those days.

  
“Probably,” Cameron said.

  
“Yes,” Daniel said. Very yes. “You probably want to get dressed for this; we need to talk in private.”

  
“Give me a minute,” She said, and closed the door again.

  
“I think I’ll leave the talking to you,” Cameron said, taking the box.

  
“That’d probably be a good idea,” Daniel said. He didn’t want to tell him that only now did he remember Taiji spoke of a goddaughter.

  
“What do you supposed is in here?” Cameron asked.

  
“Probably just a lot of paperwork,” Daniel said. “Taiji did manage a pretty big business.”

  
Cameron shook the box slightly, just enough to hear a rustle. There was a soft clink of metal.

  
Daniel rolled his eyes. Cameron was not an idiot by nature; he was merely in the wrong environment. One should put Cameron in San Francisco with the same weariness as asking Teal’c to entertain toddlers. Before Daniel could warn Cameron not to break something, the door opened.

  
Andy was almost fully dressed. Save for her hair trying to evolve a life of its own, everything had changed. From her polished shoes to her ironed shirt she was currently buttoning the cuffs on, everything about her clothes was professional. She even had an untied tie around her neck. She finished the last button and took a hair brush from her mouth and gestured for them to enter the room. “It’s harder to hear people in rooms than out in the hall.”

  
As Cameron and Daniel entered the room, they immediately noticed that there was very little to notice. There was no decoration whatsoever in the room. The most colorful objects were towels on a bookshelf that had been turned into an ironing board. The only other furniture was a desk with a lonely looking computer, an empty nightstand, and a bed that was doing a very good job at camouflaging with the white walls.

  
“What exactly do I need to sign?” she asked.

  
Suddenly everyone looks to each other, wondering if they had wandered into the wrong dimension and hoping the others knew how to fix it.  
“I… don’t need to sign something for you?” Andy asked, taking hair ornament from her pocket. “That’s kind of all I’m good at.”

  
“We need you to talk to someone,” Daniel said. “The… beneficiary isn’t ion a very good host. It wrote down your name, so we think it wants you to find a new one.”  
“The current host won’t tell you?” Andy asked, fastening the hair ornament to hold a Chinese-style but at the back of her head. For hair that could get so wild, it sure was easy to tame.

  
“I don’t think it’ll tell him,” Daniel said. “We’ve got two days for a new host to set up funding for an international project or we’re in big diplomatic trouble  
“I’m a lot better at dealing with that,” Andy said, happily. “But I don’t think I can work on that kind of deadline.” There was a genuine eagerness to help. The stargate programs had seen many people whose minds were strangely embedded in their field of work to the point that their talent and their life were one and the same. This was different, though. This was not a case of interest. To her, the skill was as easy as breathing, but it was more that she had evolved to breathe this kind of air, than choose to. “I just started my last class and I just moved in because I wasn’t doing any of that sort of stuff anymore.”

  
“What sort of stuff?”

  
“Going over companies that want investors or third-party mediators or inspectors, budgets, basic planning, mostly it’s judging whether it’s a worthwhile client to be associated with.”

  
“You know how to do that?” Cameron asked. San Francisco was a lot weirder than he thought. “And you’re just now in college?”

  
“This is my last class,” she said. “I’ve been doing that for five years. Anyway, it sounds like you need a lawyer; I can give you a number if you need until I’m done. I finally have a chance to get to socialise on campus; I’ve got stuff to unpack; I need to make lunch; study… I didn’t even know Uncle Jesse did contracts with the military.”

  
“Uncle?” Cameron wondered aloud.

  
“It’s actually an international peace project,” Daniel said. “It was Jesse’s idea entirely.”

  
“The current host can’t just sign a budget?” Andy asked. “Besides, it’s not like anyone’s hurt.”

  
“What if someone was?” Daniel asked.

  
“Let me grab my jacket,” she said.

  
“What just happened?” Cameron asked.

  
“So someone’s not hurt?” Andy asked, opening a bare and lonely closet. There was only one jacket and a few boxes of clothes inside. The jacket itself was not promising. The thing had been patched up, re-tailored, altered, and sewn back together many times. It sported several a large memorial appliqué on one side that said ‘rainbow connection’. It came down to her knees and the sleeves went well past her hands.

  
“No wonder it didn’t tell Todd anything,” Daniel said. There are some jobs for mediators. There are some jobs for sociologists. Explaining someone like this to Todd in his current condition was a job for a magician.

  
“There is no way we’re letting her feed a wraith,” Cameron said. Todd was going to do significant damage tripping on her—if he ever started walking again.

  
“What’s a wraith?” Andy asked. “I thought this was about helping someone in a hospital, not feeding your pet.”

  
“So much for ‘long story short.’ Daniel said, rolling his eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

“That’s a wraith?” Andy asked. She didn’t seem aware that everyone in the room was staring at her, shocked and disappointed at her lack of awe, forgetting she had known less human-like aliens personally. “So what exactly do I say? Majoring in labor management didn’t really prepare me for a conversation like this.”

  
“Just tell him you like his music and he has your alien and you want it back,” Vala suggested.

  
“What happened to him?” Andy asked.

  
“Long story,” John said.

  
“How long?” Andy asked. “I’ve got, what—a day, two?”

  
“Yeah, way too long for that,” John said.

  
“So, what’s the bottom line?” Andy asked calmly.

  
“Get the alien,” Vala suggested.

  
“That’s it?” Andy asked. She had been expecting a lot more from what little she had heard about the Stargate Program.

  
“Don’t piss off Todd,” John added.

  
“Well, that’s a little helpful,” Andy said. It wasn’t that she had changed her mind about helping this… Todd. She wondered if she should be helping these people or even this program. Then again, she’d be the one who controlled the company—if they were telling the truth. If Todd was as dangerous as they said, he could be a valuable asset—or maybe even an ally...or more.

  
“Business-wise, bottom line,” Andy clarified. For a division of the army, these people were very ignorant about how corporations worked and acted. That might be a good thing. “What are you buying if I do this?”

  
“Can you keep the problems down to one a week?” Vala asked. “And make them small ones? What?” Vala asked, seeing John and Daniel annoyed with her. “Doesn’t anyone here know how to—“

  
“I can try,” Andy said.

  
“I need to teach all of you how to haggle soon,” Vala said, rolling her eyes. “What are we going to do, just put her in a room with him and have someone wit a gun watch him?”

……………

Andy silently followed John down the hall to the heavy door that was locked with a card-reader. “We’re only doing things this way because we’re running out of time,” John said, swiping his card.

  
“I should hope so,” Andy said. She felt as if he thought she was walking into a lion cage. She might be, then again, given that he had something her uncle used to, he might not anymore. She had no idea what to expect, but she had to do this… didn’t she?

  
There was no turning back; she figured that would be a good mindset to have. If she was going to prepare people to look like they wanted peace, turning back on her decisions would be counterproductive.

  
She followed John through the door, so nervous, it felt light electricity was shooting around her fingers. She almost jumped as the door closed.

  
The black and white camera had not fully prepared her for meeting a wraith in person. She had been warned, but only upon seeing the color of his skin for herself did she grasp just how truly ‘alien’ he was. Somehow he seemed even stranger than a symbiote now, as she had been raised by one with a happy host, never seeing the damage they could unleash. The camera had even failed to capture his size; merely sitting on what would have been a very silly blanket in a different situation and looking so pathetic, she knew he would trip over her without watching out.

  
He looked up, his gaze darting first to John, then staying on her. There was a tiny part of his expression that showed he recognized her, but the rest was blankly dumbfounded, waiting for her to do something.

  
She wished she knew what to do. She had had a plan, but only now did she realize how vague it was and how much she was used to using paper and essays and numbers. This wasn’t a situation that called for any of those.  
She took a deep breath. “Ni Hao,” she said. “Wo-duh ming-d'zih An Doushi.”

took a deep breath. “Ni Hao,” she said. “Wo-duh ming-d'zih An Doushi.”

  
Todd looked just as confused as John felt for a moment, only for a different reason. While John has no idea what she had just said—the inflection or what she said didn’t even sound like she was speaking in sentences to him—Todd had never been addressed similar to hearing ‘Yo. ‘Sup?” and now it was his turn to have no idea what to do for a long while.

  
Very slowly, and strangely carefully, he replied to her in the same strange language, leaving John more confused than afraid. The two continued to converse, Todd taking his time to come up with a reply and Andy sat down, out of arm’s reach for the wraith.

  
John sighed, realizing he’d have to ask Daniel what they were saying later. Todd had mentioned that whoever had locked him up had used the intercom themselves and when Daniel accidentally knocked the microphone over, it took fifteen minutes of nothing happening for Todd to settle down.

  
The two kept talking, practically having a normal conversation. As much as John knew Todd could use something that would get him to relax, he didn’t want to know what wraith spoke of in casual conversation.

  
Then he realized that as little time as they had, he was going to be here for a while.

…………………

John was bored. He was tired of being on his feet, even with the crutches. He could shoot with them if he had to, but Todd wasn’t even playing with him. He seemed to have found a new human to be interested in. He hoped Andy could adapt quickly. He had never once had a clue what Andy and Todd were talking about that was all they were doing. However, it was a good thing he was paying attention; this symbiote didn’t waste its time.

  
It leapt from one neck to the other. In almost the time it took to blink, they went from chatting to Andy rubbing her neck and Todd recoiling in case John wanted to blame the mysterious happening on him. John quickly went over to Andy and pulled her back by the shoulder as Todd stared on, no longer surprised now that John wasn’t going to blame him. He probably wouldn’t be surprised if John did.

…………

There was nothing to do now. Andy was talking with Woolsey and Vala,doing her best to talk to something that no longer felt like having a conversation with her. Daniel was busy looking up what he knew about symbiotes from what little he’d gleaned from the Tok’ra. Cameron was talking to Landry and from the sound of things, they both felt Todd was extra baggage now.

  
John felt stupid for not having a plan yet. He did just want Todd out of someone else’s hands, he wanted… Todd deserved more than Area 51, even for all the trouble he’d caused. John still didn’t know why he cared that much about what happened to Todd. He didn’t know why and he was no longer interested in figuring out why. All he knew was that he wanted to keep Todd safe from everybody and to keep everybody safe from Todd. He didn’t want to know anymore, lest his mind got even less practical.

  
John sighed. When in doubt about what to do with Todd, see what he’s hiding.

  
Todd seemed just as bored as John was, but not at all as apprehensive. He was merely surprised to see John as if he had been expecting someone else.  
“What were you two talking about?” John asked. He hadn’t brought a weapon. He didn’t need to, even if Todd was up to something. No matter the plan, Todd couldn’t do much but glare and talk.

  
“Many things,” Todd answered. “She had many questions.”

  
“What kind of questions could you answer?” John asked. Todd barely had a clue as to where he was.

  
“She wanted to know much about wraith… and Atlantis.”

  
John really hoped Andy spoke to a human about Atlantis as well.

  
“She asked about a relative… it took some time for her to explain them.”

  
“Well, I hope you understand, because I’m not going to clear anything up for you about that sort of stuff.”

  
“She will be back,” Todd said nonchalantly.

  
“How do you know?” John asked. At least it wasn’t taking much effort to figure out what he was hiding.

  
“She told me she had come here to help me,” Todd said. “She told me that when she knows how, she would help me heal—I doubt you can find anyone else who can give me that.”

  
“I warned you about—“

  
“She wanted to volunteer before I told her I knew something of how to survive,” Todd said calmly.

  
John really wanted to punch something. He wished he had a good excuse for his target to be Todd, but he knew it was his own fault for never explaining the term ‘civilian’ to the wraith. As terrified as anyone, even the janitors were on Atlantis, at least they knew they could face threats to their lives at any moment even with all the technology the city offered. He had had so many opportunities since Todd had been rescued to explain the difference between people who worked with the Stargate program and those who didn’t even know aliens existed. He never even bothered to try and deter Todd from thinking all humans were the same in intent and fault. He probably thought it was due to Andy growing up raised by an alien that made her different and nothing else.

  
“We’re a bit backed up right now. We’ve got a really tight deadline to get Atlantis back into space and I’m hoping you’re going to be there so we can put you back where you belong.” John said. Somehow Todd caused less worry having a whole galaxy to mess with than one little earth city.

  
“She did not tell you that she intended to return before Atlantis left?” Todd asked.

  
“Um…” John said. Either Todd was messing with him a lot better than he usually did or John had somewhere else to be. Andy had just mumbled and rubbed her neck. The only thing he remembered that she said was that she needed to sit down. After that, she was someone else’s problem.

  
“You had better have told her it hurts,” John said.

  
Something was wrong. Not with Todd, and not with him, but… with something between them. Something was gone, slipping away, and John didn’t want to let it go. The problem was he had no idea what he wanted to cling to.

The problem was he had no idea what he wanted to cling to.

……………...

“What are you doing?” John asked, entering the room Andy had been given. Apparently Vala and Woolsey had left, hopefully on their own volitions. If Andy had scared or bored them away, it was just yet another problem he had no idea how to handle. He’d like to solve something one of these days, even if it was finding a missing sock.

  
Her door had been left open. There were balls of paper all over the floor. She looked up in the middle of writing on a large pad of paper to finally notice him. “I was going to get those when I was finished.”

  
Andy was sitting on a chair, occasionally scribbling on a pad of paper. She had a copy of everything Jesse had written up on the project, the papers she had flipped through weighed down by the box she had inherited. There was no sign that anything else had been taken out of it.

  
“Finished doing what?” John asked, picking up one of the balls and unwrapping it. The writing was all in Chinese. Of course it was. Why would things be easy for him now?

  
“Looking over the specs on the plan for Atlantis,” she said politely, yet not paying attention to him. Her voice wasn’t at all condescending; in fact, she seemed to imply respect, even as she was distracted.

  
“If you’re trying to figure out where to put Todd, the brig is still where we left it,” John said. “Until you can let him go back into space, I mean. I don’t think he’d mind. Unless that…thing of yours has a better idea.”

  
“It hasn’t said a word,” Andy said. “Then again it’s young and made to blend in with him, so I’d be surprised if it did do anything.”

  
“What’s that mean?” John asked. How come everyone he talked to these days confused him?

  
“It means symbiotes prefer to get DNA from the host they hope to give to their children and that there are ways to do it that don’t make you want to soak your head in bleach,” And said.

  
“So what ideas did you come up with?” John asked, hoping to change the subject.

  
“Nothing good,” Andy said. “Nothing possible…. Nothing anyone would agree to… nothing anyone else would agree to.”

  
“Don’t worry; Woolsey can handle it,” John said. “I mean you just pay taxes and insurance and keep shareholders happy, right?”

  
“That and oversight of the place and the meeting at the Peace Headquarters unless I’m voted out and replaced,” Andy said.

  
“At least you know when you’ve got a plan no one wants,” John said. “That better than most oversight I’ve known.”

  
“That’s part of the problem,” Andy said, sighing. Apparently things weren’t just business as usual anymore. “I knew Jesse. He’d leave room for negotiations, but not much. If he felt people weren’t listening to reason and morals, he pulled the plug on investments and projects and left the others in the dust with only themselves to blame. Jesse wouldn’t want that part changed when he took on oversight of Atlantis. It’s pretty usual for business, but… If I make demands I fee need to be made now, I could be ruining the project but if I back down, it’d be putting a ‘kick me’ sign on a Peace Federation when we start out. Either one could mean losing a lot of lives in just the beginning and a lot of work fixing everything to stop more.”

  
John suddenly realized what he was losing. This was the person who was going to replace him. Sure, she’d have a different job, but this was the person who was going to keep everyone else out of trouble, including Todd. A young woman who had only just learned of wraith was going to be the one to protect everyone on Atlantis. Worse, this tiny person with no military—probably no skill at any sort of defense at all—was going to be the one to deal with Todd. John wasn’t just losing his leadership, Todd wasn’t ‘his’ anymore—and Todd wasn’t going to protest this change whatsoever. He had found a new ally, someone new to test and push and tease. After all everything he’d done and said and threatened and planned and worried over, he was still going to lose Todd.

  
“Unless I want to push to rework the entire Atlantis workforce, I don’t think anyone will accept my proposal,” Andy said. “Either way, we’re probably going to make enemies right off the bat. How does the Stargate Program plan for stuff like that?”

  
“Sounds like you’re in over your head,” John said. She wasn’t ready for any of this. Hell, given her age and his math, she was barely ready to finish college.  
“Not enough not to figure out how to swim,” she said. “Besides, if you had someone better in mind, why didn’t you talk to them ion the first place?”

  
John felt it was a good thing she was focusing either on the Atlantis specs or her pad of paper. He’d be in for a much longer conversation that he didn’t want to handle right now if she saw his expression. It was hard enough not to say that she asked questions like Todd, things that would rile people up even if she just wanted people to think or have further insight to a person. He decided to backtrack and stay on his original topic. That tended to work with Todd. “You could call the whole thing off now. You’re still in college and you didn’t sign up for any of this, anyway.”

  
Andy set her paper down and looked at John. There was no anger, no resentment, no negative feelings at all. There was curiosity and behind that was fear tinged with awe. Only now was she in over her head. “How many people to their face that the Stargate Program is going to give up and won’t help anyone anymore because someone got scared and decided to go back to college?” It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t even a test. She wanted an honest answer because if there was a number greater than one, John was in the wrong room.

  
“I think I can see the problem,” John said. The problem was that he wanted to keep a friend who didn’t trust him to return a stupid children’s book and she wanted to do whatever was the smartest way to help everyone without making everyone else just as paranoid. One way or the other, he was going to lose Todd and only one of them would be his fault. “Todd doesn’t have anything to do with this, does he?”

  
“How did you know?” Andy asked. She could be level-headed, she could do her best to adapt to what everyone needed from her, she could even consider people when dealing with oversight of a corporation, yet she was easy to surprise if you just knew how. She was no Jesse, but she just might grow into the hardened idealism that could face reality. If she could figure out how to handle Todd and avoid cars Atlantis might not be as doomed as he suspected.

  
“It’s sort of his thing; you’re going to have to get used to it,” John said. “What’d he do?”

  
“Complicated things,” Andy answered.

  
“That doesn’t narrow it down,” John said.

  
“Atlantis will be taking in refugees from two different beta sites over the next month according to the specs. No one gets on without clearance from chosen stargate personnel and they only get a temporary visa as an incentive to go find somewhere to actually live. I want to give him refugee status—if someone else can clear him for a visa. There are too many practical reasons for it, but too many… human reasons not to. If he can’t keep his hands to himself, I don’t see why security can’t shoot him.”

  
“Just out of curiosity, what practical reasons would there be for this?”

  
“Well, we just rescued him from somewhere that decided since he isn’t human, ethics don’t apply, so singling out any sort of aliens in the Peace Federation would be a bad idea. It would make attacking Atlantis look more like a bad idea, having at least one hive as an ally could give us several advantages, and it’d give him a reason to trust us if we give him a choice between the brig or behaving himself. I’ve also found that confusing people tends to make them stop what they’re doing and not cause trouble for a while.”

  
“I think I’ve noticed,” John said. Technically, she had a point. Saying they’d allow anyone who’d behave themselves would keep them from looking like bad guys, and this planet really needed some of that right now. If there weren’t wraith capable of behaving themselves, it wouldn’t be Atlantis’s fault at all. If they could behave themselves, Atlantis could take the credit. Atlantis wasn’t even forcing them to behave since it was a choice to get a visa in the first place.

  
She was right, though. This plan wouldn’t work, even if ever wraith were at fault because of other people. Woolsey wouldn’t sign on for it. Ronon wouldn’t be able to not get in a fight with Todd. No refugee would come near him and the entire stargate staff would be on edge if he so much as blinked. That was even if anyone could find a reason to believe he could behave for more than five minutes.

  
“I just don’t think this new project can afford to keep them as an enemy,” Andy said.

  
“Well, we’ve been doing that for five years and—yeah, that’s probably a bad idea,” John said. It wasn’t any of the memories of fighting with the wraith that stopped him; it was remembering that there was a wraith who believed all humans were the same. He might be losing him to someone else, but it’d be far worse if Todd also learned that after so many years of alliances and fighting, John was responsible for Atlantis itself to show him that yes, all humans were the same by saying all wraith were the same. “Are you still going to try and help him?”

  
“Yep,” she said, going back to her notes. From her tone of voice, she had already been warned it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Again, this time it wasn’t about business. Deciding to ask Todd if he wanted a visa like all the other refugees had been, but going through something painful and risking a good chunk of her life if she couldn’t duplicate what Jesse could do was something she wanted to do—something she practically wanted.

  
This was the person who was going to be a leader for Atlantis. Even if she never went on missions, she was the one people would go to for problems and assurance. She was going to keep Todd in line. She was going to keep Rodney in line. She was going to explain earth to Ronon and Teyla. He wasn’t going to be there to help her replace him and she was leaving tomorrow with the alien he never got to say goodbye to the way he should have. He didn’t know how that should have gone, but it hadn’t gone right at all. Too bad he couldn’t take them out for beers. “Do you play cards?”

………………

Andy entered the room alone this time.

  
Todd was surprised. He didn’t say whether he hadn’t believed she’d come back or if it was because John wasn’t watching, especially on this occasion.

  
Andy took a few steps and stopped, her gaze fixed on his.

  
“You are frightened,” Todd said, his voice blank. It was just a fact, undeniable and obvious.

  
“I’m terrified,” she admitted as she forced herself to take another step. “It didn’t really help that I learned a few minutes ago that the last person who volunteered for this died.”

  
“He no longer wished to live,” Todd said as it that explained everything.

  
“That’s not really all that comforting,” Andy said. She stayed where she was. “How do you know how old a human is? How do you know to keep from killing them?”

  
“There is something in their eyes,” Todd answered. “It is… I do not believe it can be described.”

  
“We’re being watched,” Andy warned him.

  
“I know,” Todd replied. “I have been watched during this before.”

  
“With a girl?” Andy asked, taking another step towards him. She was almost within arm’s reach of him and her fear suddenly intensified beyond what she believed possible. She didn’t think she could move.

  
“I do not understand,” Todd replied.

  
Andy looked at the camera. She had asked Vala to be the one to watch things. SG-1 was going to be called to Atlantis in about a day. This was not the best way to make friends, but she hadn’t wanted a male to be watching. Not this time. Still… “I’ll tell you later. I promise.” She pulled something out of her pocket: some sort of flat red stone with a gold-colored handle that she had no idea how to hold. “I’m not sure if I can do this.”

  
“If you feel you are not strong enough, you did not have to come here,” Todd said. What was he going to do about it other than listen to John if she didn’t want to?  
“Strength doesn’t matter. I need to do this.” She wanted to back away, despite what she was saying. “I just don’t know if I can use this…thing. I don’t know if I can keep what I’m going to do from being useless.”

  
“It promised that thing would work now that you have it,” Todd said.

  
For watching something he needed so badly being just barely within reach, he was being very patient. Andy hoped it wasn’t just the camera or his leg that kept him where he was.

  
“You mean Neidan?” Andy asked, pointing to her head. She couldn’t feel her limbs as she did. Her voice was little more than a squeak.

  
“Humans love to name things, don’t they?” Todd mused.

  
“It wanted one,” Andy said. She closed her eyes and unbuttoned her shirt slightly, taking another step towards him and kneeling down in front of him, gritting her teeth.

  
Todd didn’t hesitate, yet his touch was slow and gentle as he places his hand on her bare skin, feeling her jump before he began to feed.

  
Andy did her best not to scream from the pain, curling in on his hand and fiercely grabbing his shoulder—the first thing she could find with her eyes closed—digging her nails into his shirt. She hissed inwardly as her body began to show severe signs of aging.

  
Todd pulled his hand away, but hers stayed where it was. With her other hand, slow, and withered, she pulled the strange device close. For a moment nothing happened. Todd worriedly turned to the camera, expecting to hear a reprimand over the intercom. There was nothing but silence; as Todd was beginning to grow tense, despite the strength he’d gained, a reassuring red glow appeared and he turned back to Andy. Healing was slow compared to having assistance from a wraith, yet Todd watched with intrigue as her hair returned to hurts normal color and bright sheen.

  
As soon as enough strength returned to her arm, she pulled her hand away and grabbed one of the books and opened it just before vomiting from the pain on it.  
“I think I fell on a weed whacker,” Andy muttered, shoving the book away. “Sorry about that.”

  
“What--?” Todd began.

  
“Not now,” Andy said between panting. She held up a hand with the other one holding her stomach. “John’s going to show up in a few minutes; he said it was important. Besides, if you want to talk without someone listening, it can wait a day or two, right?”

  
“You have plans?” he asked.

  
“If you agree to them,” she replied, sit up and breathing normally.

  
Todd’s expressions were often difficult to fully interpret and this was no exception. However, it was obvious that she had set the gears in his head turning.  
Andy ignored him. He could think of whatever he wanted. It would a take a while to heal, given his injuries; even she could figure that out. Besides, even if he could suddenly get up and walk about, he couldn’t leave.

  
Andy left Todd to think is peace and he stayed silent as she regained her energy and button her shirt. True to her word, John arrived shortly afterward. Only Todd was surprised at John’s arrival; he was in a cheerful mood, something Todd hadn’t seen from him ever.

  
“Don’t give me that look,” John said, walking over to the two. He pulled out a deck of cards from his jacket pocket. “It’s a game; you’re going to need to know it.”  
“This is what was so important?” Andy asked. “I need to get back to work.”

  
“One way or another, you two need to learn to have some fun with people,” John said sternly, keeping Andy where she was.

  
It wasn’t gold, but it was the best send off he could manage. It was something all three of them deserved. After all, it turned out Atlantis was going to get what it deserved. John just hoped the city would survive long enough for him to see it again.


End file.
